Bob Shaw

Just finished reading The Two-Timers, a Bob Shaw novel from 1968. It has brought back a lot of memories. There was a time when I would devour every Bob Shaw book I could lay my hands on, indeed I thought I had read them all until finding this one, in a second-hand book shop in Seahouses, Northumberland. I wandered in there on a wet day, a couple of years ago, while on holiday. It cost me just 60p. (Mind you, the original cover price was 25p, so it has appreciated in value over the years.)
I wondered if a Bob Shaw novel could still do it for me. Was the magic real or was it just the best of a narrow crop of reading matter that was drawing me in at the time.And the answer is: magic? - oh yes, indeed! Okay, it isn't one of his blockbusters (like Orbitsville or The Ragged Astronauts) and the settings and attitudes feel a little dated, but then that's because it was contemporary at the time of writing. This isn't a futuristic novel, it is firmly set in the quaint present of 1968, and the world of 43 years ago certainly feels like a different place. But the SF ideas in here had all the entertainment value I remember from those days when, to me, a new Bob Shaw was a big event. At a time when I was also reading a lot of Asimov and Arthur C Clarke, a Bob Shaw novel had its emphasis on realistic characters and driving plot, and I found his books riveting.
We lost Bob Shaw in 1996. Imagine what wonders he'd be giving us today if he were still around.

Fish

My short story, “The Last Fisherman of Habitat 37” is to appear in the new FISH anthology by Dagan books. Check out this link for the full table of contents... http://daganbooks.com/2011/10/01/official-table-of-contents-for-fish/

…and isn’t the cover illustration, by Galen Dala, just fabulous?

Very excited to be involved in this anthology. It should be out in February 2012.

Kindle Fire

Ha! Twelve months ago I was an early adopter (at least by UK standards) I was the first person reading a Kindle on my commute. I felt so cool as people craned their necks to see what this new hi-tech magic was that I had in my hands. Now... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/technology-15096655 ... my trusty e-reader is about to become a quaint piece of retro steam punk.

I wonder if it will hit the UK before Christmas.

Wielding the Axe

I've been struggling with a story for the past few months, trying to find a home for it, but the response has always been - we enjoyed it but...
This week I decided it needed editing. Serious editing. It has been trimmed and clipped many times but has always come in at just over 6500 words.
I decided to be brutal.
There had to be tears.
There are a lot of markets that take stories of no more than 4000 words. For this story I've long resisted. This story is one of my darlings. Surely chopping out a full third of it would rip the guts out. Well it took me a week. First a thousand words, then five hundred. Then a few more here, a few more there and, well, the story now weighs-in at 3993. And it's better by far. Nothing is lost, save some beautiful, flowery, purple self-indulgence. What is left is the bones; a sun-bleached skeleton of a story that gets right down to it and doesn't muck about around the edges. Who'd have thought.
The story is called...
I'll tell you what it's called if I sell it.

Out of this World

It has been a good week. To begin with I sold a story to NewMyths.com and the acceptance email arrived in the final hours of my birthday – a very welcome extra birthday gift. Dead Man's Shoes is scheduled to be published in the March 1 issue of NewMyths.com so I will post a link when it happens.

The other thing that happened was I finally got the chance to visit the Out of this World exhibition at the British Library in London. I first learned about the exhibition when The Guardian newspaper ran a Science Fiction special to coincide with the opening, earlier in the year. It sounded good, but... well, it's in London. Everything UK is in London, and I'm not. For me it is an expensive deal to get down to the capital, so I muttered about it and hoped an opportunity would turn up.

And this week the day-job stepped up by sending me, not once, but twice down to the big city for meetings. On Monday I travelled with the laptop and ipad executives on the early train, feeling like I was important. Then, in London, I left the high-flyers and caught the tube out to Wood Green, to a tiny, overheated office, where 30+ people met in a room that was little larger than a news kiosk. But it was a successful meeting, not the least because it finished at 4.30, giving me time to dash back into London and catch the last hour of the British Library before it closed.

So, with barely a week remaining before it ended, I was able to see the Out of This World exhibition. And hey, it was worth it. Someone has done a remarkable job researching this thing. It really was very good indeed. Amongst the highlights were the hand-drawn timeline sketches for First and Last Men by Olaf Stapledon (A Wirral writer it must be said). A page of the original theme tune score for Dr Who, by Ron Grainer of the BBC radiophonic workshop, (mercifully keeping the Dr Who content proportionate) and also a real gem, a page of an early typewritten draft of John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, complete with typos and corrections and edits. This really was a rare and special exhibition. And it was all about the printed word; books and magazines. The temptation is, so often, to resort to film media - but this time the printed word was the focal point, and rightly so for a library exhibit, and it was so good to see.

So, a big thank you to my day job bosses for bankrolling this little outing. It's nice that, for once, things actually worked out.

Short-Story.Me

Back from my holidays in France (for details of that particular fiasco you might wish to pop over to Travelling in a Box) and after all the ups and downs it's nice to see that I have a story, Call Me Murph, that's now up on Short-Story.Me
This is a tidy little on-line magazine and it publishes some very nice fiction in a wide range of genres, so I am well pleased to be up there. It's worth checking them out.

Murder

My current work in progress is a murder mystery. No, I haven't gone all Agatha Christie, it has robots and quantum chromodynamics and stuff. But there is a strong who-dunnit element and I'm so enjoying the research, maybe even more so than the actual writing. The trouble with that is I'm doing a lot of Googling about creative ways of bumping people off, so I'm hoping it doesn't trigger something on any of the security agencies' computers, something that has bells ringing and unmarked cars arriving outside my house late at night. (Mind you, they won't find me there, I'm in the caravan in the mountains somewhere, right now, so yah boo! Enjoy the donuts) Seriously though, if the spooks do pick up on what I'm researching they're probably reading this blog, too. If you are, this next bit is for you. It's fiction, okay? It's research. None of it is real. (although the day-job boss might do well to watch his back - oops, that bit is a joke, promise.)
So there you have it. Watch out for a forthcoming story that combines Miss Marple with Asimov. Haven't got a title yet, but "I, Agatha" might be a contender.