Yesterday, I returned from my brother’s stag weekend in Amsterdam, having spent two nights drinking and clubbing until 6am.

There’s a great vibe in Amsterdam. Something’s always happening. There’s a lot of energy in the streets and squares at all hours of the day and night. The Red Light District really buzzes after dark. But there’s more to the city than that, and if you explore further afield you’ll find pavement cafes and quiet canal-side pubs, where you can sit and have a beer and watch the passing cyclists and trams.

Apologies for the lack of writing updates. Trust me, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. I’ve been spending most of my free time hammering away at my next novel and I’ve made significant progress. At the same time, I’ve written detailed outlines for two brand new, action-packed short stories, and submitted a third new story to market.

With these new stories, I have enough material for a second short story collection.

Jason Sanford is expanding on his notion of “Sci-fi Strange”:

What makes SciFi Strange “strange” isn’t necessarily the style of writing. Instead, it’s the focus of the writing. It’s how these authors explore today’s rapidly changing multicultural world and the basic human values and needs which bind us together. And at the heart of these stories is the basic strangeness, the basic uniqueness, the wide-eyed “gee-whiz” wonder and/or sense of horror which the golden age of SF displayed when it knocked upon the doors of reality back in the ’40s and ’50s. Except now this sense of awe is being told with the full range of writing styles and cultural understandings embraced by the New Wave movement of the ’70s. And where golden age SF writers dealt with a worldview which was white-bread and analog, SciFi Strange deals with an ever-changing scientific understanding of life and the universe–an understanding which is unnervingly close to being philosophical in nature.

“The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has neither dedication nor any membership in literature.” -  John Steinbeck

How many movies or TV series end with the main characters riding off in a flying car? So far, I’ve been able to think of only seven:

1. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
2. Grease
3. Back To The Future
4. Thelma & Louise
5. Repo Man
6. Vroom
7. Blade Runner

Can you think of any more?

Yesterday’s email brought with it the first royalty statement from Elastic Press for my short story collection, The Last Reef and Other Stories. Going through the figures, I’m pleased to see that over the past 12 months, the book’s sold out in hardback, and almost sold out in paperback, with only a few copies of the paperback left in the publisher’s warehouse.

My only regret is that Elastic Press have ceased trading, which means there won’t be a second printing.

What’s your favourite “guilty pleasure” sci-fi film? Which DVDs do you reach for on a Friday night? My top ten include (in no particular order):

• The Matrix
• Independence Day
• The Terminator
• Back To The Future
• Armageddon
• Dark City
• Serenity
• Highlander
• Aliens
• The Abyss

Yesterday on Twitter, I asked:

We’ve had New Weird and Steampunk. What’s going to be the “next big thing” in science fiction?

As you can imagine, I had a number of replies. Some were serious, others less so. For instance, I think Marc Gascoigne was perfectly serious with this heartfelt plea:

Spacepunk, sir… Spacepunk

Whereas Jonathan McCalmont had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he wrote:

VampirePunk : The former members of Crass kick the shit out of the casts of Twilight and the Anita Blake novels.

But the one that really caught my eye was a blog post from Jason Sanford in which he puts the case for an emerging trend he calls “SciFi Strange“.

SciFi Strange writers live in today’s multicultural world, where diversity and difference are the norm, even as we explore the basic human values and needs which bind all of us together. SciFi Strange also flirts with the boundaries of what is scientifically–and therefore realistically–possible, without being bounded by the rigid frames of the world as we know it today. But don’t mistake SciFi Strange for fantasy. This is pure science fiction. It’s merely an updated version of the literature of ideas. A SF equipped for a world where the frontiers of scientific possibility are almost philosophical in nature.

He goes on to name a few stories he identifies as SciFi Strange, including stories by Aliette de Bodard,  Eugie Foster, Mercurio D. Rivera, Paolo Bacigalupi, Ted Chiang, Ian McDonald, and Nnedi Okorafor. He even includes my own short story, “Ack-Ack Macaque“.

What do you think? Does his argument make sense – or are there other “movements” emerging in modern science fiction?

When I’m working on a new story, I have to believe that it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. I have to believe it’s better than the story that preceded it. I have to be excited about it. I have to feel it stretching me as a writer.

Otherwise, why write it?

It’s beginning to look as if I’ll have a busy time at Eastercon in April next year. The event, which is being held at Heathrow, looks likely to play host to the launch of 3 books featuring my work, including two anthologies and my debut novel.