Second paragraph of third chapter:I jumped, not having heard anyone’s footsteps on the staircase which led up to the observation deck. I’d assumed I was completely alone. All the other passengers had retired to their rooms immediately upon boarding - the journey just long enough to justify unpacking their luggage - but I had gone up onto the ( Read more... )

I had intended to spend this weekend with Alastair Reynolds and many others at CapClave in Washington DC, but alas something came up and I must stay in Europe. I have read shamefully few of his books, though I have greatly enjoyed his company when fate has thrown us together - I particularly remember a rather hungover but very collegial train ( Read more... )

"We are what we are, Doctor. If I did not exist, the universe would soon fill the void left by my absence. You could almost say that the universe requires us. We are order and disorder. We balance each other very effectively."
This wheeze of getting well-known writers to contribute new Doctor Who books is proving an awfully good adventure. This is ( Read more... )

Announcement here.

A long time ago I read Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds, and rather bounced off it; perhaps, in retrospect, it was because I read it towards the end of a long work trip and simply wasn't in the mood. Since then, the recommendations of friends and also amicable encounters with Reynolds himself at a couple of sf cons persuaded me to give him ( Read more... )

This year's list is a good one, none of the stories being as bad as the worst in the other fiction categories.

5) One has to start pruning somewhere though, and Elizabeth Hand's "The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon", though itself a nice characterful story, is only barely sf; it's really about some present-day employees of the Smithsonian ( Read more... )

I was in and out of Beneluxcon this weekend, given that it was just up the road in the Novotel in Leuven and featured three particularly interesting authors, Ken MacLeod, Christopher Priest and Alastair Reynolds. There were 100 people signed up (I myself was alphabetically last at #100) but I didn't see more than 40 there at any given time. I was ( Read more... )

Ken MacLeod, Christopher Priest and Alastair Reynolds.

A shorter visit today.

( Read more... )