Andrew Wheeler gives a run-down on the Hugo fiction shortlists here, but it's some of the comments he makes in passing that I find interesting. He first complains that Peter Watts 'The Things' is a "backwards-looking story ... which retells a famous old story in a new way" and that "there have been far too many backwards-looking SF stories over the ( Read more... )

I seem to have been strangely busy the past week or so, and, I have to admit, somewhat short on inspiration for a subject to write about here. So here's some cheap content: a meme. This was originally put together by Charles Tan. As usual: bold it if you've read it, italicise it if you own it but haven't read it.

1. The Monkey’s Wedding and Other ( Read more... )

My story 'Disambiguation' is now up on the website of Alt Hist, the magazine of historical fiction and alternate history. It was originally published here on my blog a couple of months ago, but now it's found a better home. It's something of an experimental piece since it's constructed from a series of real and fake Wikipedia articles. It also has ( Read more... )

I have always been a science fiction writer. I remember filling an exercise book with deck-plans for a starship when I was twelve years old. I wish I could find that book, but it has long since vanished. During my teens I played RPGs, and wrote up the sessions as fiction. After joining the British Science Fiction Association in the late 1980s, I ( Read more... )

Yesterday, a review of Alt Hist 1 was posted on The Portal here. The reviewer said of my story in the issue, 'Travelling by Air', that the "story really embraces what, for me, is so entrancing with alternate history". Which makes me happy.

Incidentally, the second issue of Alt Hist should be out in the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing ( Read more... )

Old stories never die, they either sit and moulder in old magazines, or they get republished again and again. But not anymore. Thanks to the magic of modern technology, they can live again. Just reformat that Standard Manuscript Format, slap on some cover-art, and publish it for the Kindle.

Which is precisely what I've done for two of my stories. ( Read more... )

A week or so ago I set myself a challenge: to write a science fiction story in which a flying boat featured prominently. I was hoping to come up with some heartland sf story, something with spaceships and aliens and such. And flying boats, of course. But I couldn't come up with a plot in which a flying boat, especially a historical one, might ( Read more... )

Back in October 2009, I wrote a piece on my first Euripidean Space story, 'Thicker than Water' - you can find it here. 'A Cold Dish' was the second of my stories set in that universe, and it too was published in Jupiter magazine - in Jupiter 28, April 2010.

'A Cold Dish' is based on the play The Suppliants by Euripides. The play recounts how Theseus ( Read more... )

Des Lewis has started a "Real Time Review" of the Winter 2010 BFS Journal (see my photos of it here). So far, he's read the first eight stories from New Horizon. Which includes mine, 'Barker' - about which he writes:

"A claustrophobic vision, this time in a punch-drunk comic-strip rocket. Real history and real names in retrocausality. To my ( Read more... )

My review of Music for Another World, a themed anthology edited by Mark Harding, is now up at SFF Chronicles here. This is the anthology which contains 'Arrhythmia', Neil Williamson's BSFA Award shortlisted story.

(Cross-posted from It Doesn't Have To Be Right...)