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.

Thanks to Chris Teague at Pendragon Press, I now have an A3 poster and a stack of limited-edition promotional postcards for Silversands, featuring Vincent Chong’s excellent cover design. They arrived in the post this morning, and they’re very pretty.

The postcards will used to promote the novel at Eastercon.

A little while ago, John Anealio asked me to participate in a new feature at his Sci-Fi Songs blog, called Interstellar Jukebox, where an invited group of writers, bloggers, musicians, and podcasters  weigh in on some Sci-Fi related music topic.

The participants’ collected responses to the first topic have been posted today. The subject was favourite songs with the word “space” in the title, and this is what I wrote:

I discovered Patti Smith while at school, in the late 1980s. I’d been into the Velvet Underground for a couple of years, and I was just discovering and getting into all these cool American bands, like the Ramones and The Doors. I picked up a vinyl copy of her first album, Horses (1975), at a record store in Bristol, at the top of Park Street, opposite the museum. It was produced by John Cale, whose early albums I really liked, and Smith looked amazing on the sleeve, like some sort of hip androgynous alien, with this fuck-you attitude. I looked at it all the way home on the bus, turning it over and over in my hands. When I finally got it back to my room and put it on the turntable, it blew me away. It was arty and passionate and perfect, and it took no prisoners. It mixed reggae and rock with this spectacularly demented poetry; and Smith had this incredible voice that sounded beautiful and ugly all at the same time. I was 17 years old, and I played it over and over again.

“Space Monkey” is the second track on Smith’s slightly patchier (but more commercially successful) third album, Easter (1978), and it’s a prowling, swaggering chant of a song, buoyed up by cheery organ and driving bass. Without the vocals, it might almost sound like something by Talking Heads; but here, Smith dominates the music. She alternates spoken word passages with Jim Morrison growls, until the whole thing degenerates into panting and monkey screams.

You can see the full feature, including a video of “Space Monkey” and responses from a number of other sci-fi folk, at John’s blog: Interstellar Jukebox

Issue 109 of Hub magazine is now available, featuring my short story “Gonzo Laptop”.

Click here for free download options.

A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to co-write a 10,000 word novelette with the popular Interzone and Angry Robot author, Aliette de Bodard.

The story we wrote is called “The Church Of Accelerated Redemption” and I’m pleased to  announce that it will be appearing in Shine, an anthology of near-future, optimistic science fiction edited by Jetse de Vries.

The book is due from Solaris Books in April 2010, and there will probably be a Shine launch party at Odyssey, the 2010 British EasterCon, which is being held in Heathrow in April.

In the meantime, the anthology is already available to pre-order on Amazon UK and Amazon USA.

From Monday 30 November, Jetse will be running a competition on the book’s website. He will be posting an excerpt from each of the sixteen stories in the anthology and challenging readers to guess which of four alternative endings to each story is the correct one, and which authors wrote which excerpt.

This morning, I submitted a new short story to market. The idea for it came to me while getting dressed the other day, and I wrote the whole first draft in an hour. Becky read it for me last night and suggested some minor changes, which I made on the spot. I’m planning to write another short story this afternoon, then it’s back to work on the novel.

Following my recent experiment in online short story selling, I am now in a position to offer you a PDF copy of my first short story collection, The Last Reef And Other Stories.

The Last Reef was originally published in hardback and paperback by Elastic Press in August 2008. It contains 15 short stories, and received glowing reviews from Interzone, Prism, Sci-fi Online, and The Fix.

In order to get a PDF copy of the book emailed directly to you from me, simply click on the big yellow button on the right (you may need to scroll up or down a bit).

This will take you to PayPal. All you have to do then is enter your payment details and decide how much you’d like to pay.

Yes, I’m putting the ball in your court. You decide what you think is a fair price for a 60,000 word book, pay me, and I’ll email you a copy.

It’s that simple.

I put a lot of work into this collection and I’m glad to now have the opportunity to make it available to a wider audience.

And as a special bonus, when you order a copy of The Last Reef, I’ll throw in a PDF copy of my short story “What Would Nicolas Cage Have Done?”, which isn’t normally included in the book.

So when placing your order, please remember to include your email address and state whether you’d like me to send you the PDF versions of the book, the short story, or both.

Many thanks!

This morning I took part as a speaker in an event called “How To Prosper In The Coming Bad Years“, set in this fantastic open-air venue in Victoria Park, Bristol:

The structure is called The Black Cloud, designed by artists Heather and Ivan Morison, who also hosted the event, which brought together a number of guests to discuss the future. As well as myself, the speakers included Jon Turney, science writer and author of the forthcoming Rough Guide to the Future, Richard Sandford, learning researcher at Futurelab, Lisa Morgans from Greenpeace, and Thomas F. Thornton, a lecturer from the Environmental Change Institute in Oxford.

Continue reading “Talking About The Apocalypse”