My short story collection, The Last Reef and Other Stories, is now available on the Amazon Kindle: click here to buy.

Thirty hardback copies of Silversands have just been delivered to my door, direct from the printer.

They look amazing, thanks to Vincent Chong’s cover art and design, and Christopher Teague’s typesetting.

I started writing Silversands ten years ago, and it’s strange to be finally holding  printed copies of the book in my hand. So much has happened in my life since I wrote the first words of chapter one.

The thirty copies that have been delivered today will be riding up to Odyssey 2010 in the back of my car in a fortnight’s time, and will be for sale on the TTA Press stall in the dealers’ room at the convention. I will also have a number of paperback copies of The Last Reef and Other Stories for sale/signing at the event.

Silversands is also available via Amazon or direct from Pendragon Press.

I think I use more SF tropes than fantasy ones. Plus, my work is intended to be science fiction. Whether it succeeds in that aim is something for someone else to decide. To me, the difference between SF and fantasy lays not so much in technique or subject matter as in application. Broadly speaking, I see SF as a tool for exploring what it will mean to be human in an increasingly strange and baffling future; whereas I see fantasy exploring what it means to be human (or superhuman) in worlds which plainly do not, nor ever will, exist – a hotline into our archetypal dreams and superstitions, where mighty heroes vanquish armies of grotesque sub humans and beautiful vampires fall in love with their food.

Continue reading “The Difference Between SF and Fantasy”

Had a note from Chris at Pendragon Press to tell me that the first hardback copies of Silversands should be delivered to me by the printer on Friday.

I have a new author discussion thread over at the BFS forum:

Click here for link.

In April, there will be a book launch for my first novel, and you are all invited.

The event takes place from 2.00pm on Saturday 24th April, in the back bar of The Shakespeare Tavern, Princes Street, Bristol.

I will be giving a short reading from Silversands and signing copies, so please come along and join the fun.

The Shakespeare Tavern is a traditional English pub in the Harbourside area of central Bristol. It serves a selection of beers, wines and spirits along with traditional pub meals and snacks. It is a 10 minute walk from Bristol Temple Meads railway station.

Link to Google Maps.

If you are on Facebook, you can join the event here: Link to Facebook Event

Two paperback copies of the Shine anthology have just been delivered to my door, direct from the publisher. And they look great.

Shine is an anthology of “optimistic” near-future  science fiction edited by the formidable Jetse de Vries, and featuring a cover by the award-winning artist, Vincent Chong (who also designed the cover for my novel, Silversands).

Shine is a book of short stories with an upbeat outlook on the future, a book that says no matter how bad things get, there’s always the possibility of hope. It contains 16 stories, including a 10,000 word story that I co-wrote with Aliette de Bodard, called The Church Of Accelerated Redemption.

It also contains stories by Alastair Reynolds, Kay Kenyon, Jason Stoddard, Holly Phillips, and others.

Shine is published by Solaris Books.

Moxyland is set in South Africa, only a stone’s throw into the future, in a society where the difference between employment and unemployment can also be the difference between life and death; where the greatest punishment is to have your mobile phone disconnected.

Starting slowly, the novel introduces us to its four narrators: Kendra the retro photographer; Toby the vlogcaster; Tendeka the would-be revolutionary; and Lerato the corporate programmer. Telling their intertwined stories over the course of alternating chapters, they show us their world, and we get to watch with horrified fascination as they become slowly embroiled in a deadly conspiracy that none of them fully understands.

With her stripped prose and lack of superfluous description, Lauren Beukes gives us what we need to see the world through the characters’ eyes. They never feel the need to over-explain themselves, and each has a distinctive and recognizable voice. The pages whip by quickly, as the tension grows, and as readers, we’re only half a step ahead of the characters in piecing together the seriousness of what’s going on.

Lean, sharp, and tightly written, Moxyland keeps raising the stakes, from the opening chapter to the uncompromising finale. And with its electronic panopticon, it gives us a dystopia to rival 1984 or Stand On Zanzibar – a future horrifying for its very plausibility.

Moxyland is published by Angry Robot.

Twenty years ago, Paul Kincaid carried out a survey of British science fiction and fantasy writers, in an attempt to get a handle on the state of British SF at the time.

In June 2009, I received an email from Niall Harrison, the editor of Vector, asking me to take part in a repeat of that survey, on behalf of the Bristish Science Fiction Association. These were ten questions from the original survey, plus an additional question on changes over the past two decades.

Now, an analysis of the results of both surveys is being released. BSFA members will shortly receive a copy of the results in book form. I have seen an advance PDF of the book, and I think I can safely say that it will be of interest to anyone with a stake in the state of modern British science fiction.

Find out more here.