Book Review: The Edge of the Country by Trevor Denyer

Trevor Denyer’s debut short story collection has an evocative watercolour landscape on the cover, one that makes you think of that mysterious place suggested by the title. This sets the scene for the entire collection: stories that take pace on the edge of our reality. For the most part the stories occur in mundane settings, where strange things happen, or stranger things live. People are haunted by memories of the past, and premonitions of the future as Trevor Denyer’s finely-crafted prose invokes captivating images of poignancy.

Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.

Note: This review should have appeared in last month's SF Crowsnest but the email was lost. :o(

Magazine Review: Interzone #224

Interzone #224 boasts another fabulous cover this time, again by Adam Tredowski whose work artwork has impressed me on previous issues. Internal artwork is also becoming more prominent, with full-page or even double-page spreads to accompany most stories. And what of those stories?

read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.

Note: This review should have appeared in last month's SF Crowsnest, but the email was lost. :o(

Hungarian Review

A review of Galaktika #236 has appeared on this SF Blog. The reviewer includes my story A Few Good Men as one of the two best stories of the issue. Still not seen my contributor copy, but I'm hoping it will arrive soon.

Spanish Reprint

My 100 word story The Emporer's New Forcefield, first published in Spanish in Efimeras, has been reprinted in Breves No Tan Breves.

All of my stories from Efimeras have now been reprinted, but there are still two new stories due to appear in Breves No Tan Breves.

Midnight Street Transforms

The latest issue of Midnight Street has arrived, and is to be the last print issue. From next year the magazine will be produced in PDF format, but editor Trevor Denyer is also planning to release an annual print anthology. This will contain original stories not seen in the PDF version.

I'll be reviewing this final print issue in due course.

A Few Good Men in Hungary

Sooner than I expected, A Few Good Men has appeared in Hungarian magazine Galaktika.

This is the third langguage for this story - the Spanish translation appeared in La Idea Fija in June. Hungarian is the 15th language I've been published in and the 11th new language this year.

Multi-Language Translations

I've spent quite a bit of time on the Unilang website recently, where I've found links to other language sites and friendly translators and proofreaders. Today I discovered someone looking for people to translate The Owl and the Pussycat. I visited their website, where the poem has been translated into 80 langauges so far - an epic undertaking that makes The Gondolier's 26 languages seem much less significant.

New Short Story Sale

Another Friday Flash Fiction idea that grew beyond its original bounds - Relativity has been through more incarnations than any other story I've written. This week I sold it to Escape Velocity, the hard SF magazine from Adventure Books of Seattle whose UK co-editor lives in Chester. It's due for publication some time next year.

The Gondolier in Francoprovençal

My ongoing quest to discover new worldwide SF markets has led me to find out about many of the regional or minority languages spoken in Europe. One of those is Francoprovençal, spoken by 150,000 people in France, Italy and Switzerland, according to Ethnologue. Like many of these minority languages, I didn't find a publishing outlet in Francoprovençal, but I did find a friendly translator. So, here is The Gondolier in its 25th language:

Lo Gondolèro


Lo bot nè de ma gondola findet brâvamin les égues calmes dous canâs.
La jôya imbarcassion me sarvèsset depu bien de sèzons. Menâ pe le mans de mos anciens, l'ayet condu de rinches de monsus su los canâs de la citâ.
Le solè se couchâve su la viyi citâ. L'éga simblâve changia in na banda d'incra panchia intre los biôs imeûblos avoué you davans in pira. J'aspiri fôrtamin l'ar refredi dou devèssè.
O i ayet-o on qu'o fusse in indret plu biô que cela marviyeûza citâ de canâs? Dou tin que lo balancimin dou batiô s'amodurâve din son amarrajo, je chômi na brèza per apinchi lo ciar dou mè de Mâr à bôr de nè.

Translated by Claude Longre

Gondolier Bibliography

Many of the translations of The Gondolier appear on this site rather than an official publication. This is mostly because many of the languages don't have any SF magazines, or even any literary magazines in some cases. Here's a complete bibliography of The Gondolier so far. I'll keep this up to date and add a link on the side bar.

Afrikaans - Under Submission
Basque – The Science of Fiction
Breton – The Science of Fiction
Catalan – MLN Languages
Cornish – Te Ha Tasednow(Forthcoming)
Dutch – The Science of Fiction
English - Illuminations
Esperanto – I Antologia Luzidoj
Francoprovençal - The Science of Fiction
French – Under submission
Galician - Nova Fantasia
German - Exodus (Forthcoming)
Glosa - The Science of Fiction
Greek – Ef Zin #15
Hebrew – The Science of Fiction
Hindi – Vigyan Katha
Irish - The Science of Fiction
Italian - Intercom SF
Latin - The Science of Fiction
Manx - The Science of Fiction
Mirandes – Flores Mirandesas
Norwegain - The Science of Fiction
Portuguese – I Lusiadas
Romanian – SF Era
Romansch (Puter dialect) - The Science of Fiction
Russian – The Science of Fiction
Scots - The Science of Fiction
Scottish Gaelic - The Science of Fiction
Slovenian - Infinity (Forthcoming)
Spanish – Efimeras #124 and Quimicamente Impuro
Swedish – The Science of Fiction
Ukrainian - The Science of Fiction
Welsh – The Science of Fiction

Book Review: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The first time I read the Hitchhiker books there was a gap of several months between each volume. Every time I started a book I struggled to remember what was going on and how Arthur Dent, still in his dressing gown, had ended up in his current situation. The second time I read the series it was almost one after the other, yet I still had the same problem. Eventually, and certainly by the third reading, I realised it doesn’t really matter. Almost everything that happens to the characters is bizarre and inexplicable, yet somehow follows its own quirky internal logic.

Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.

Book Review: Red Claw by Philip Palmer

Far in the future, mankind is ruled with an iron fist by a galaxy-spanning corporation that breeds soldiers, terraforms planets relentlessly and routinely commits genocide. Red Claw takes place on New Amazon, a planet of rampant jungle and insidious wildlife. Professor Richard Helms leads an expedition sent to explore and classify the wildlife before it is wiped out during the terraforming process. Philip Palmer doesn’t hold back on extravagant plot twists, bizarre alien biology and larger-than-life characters. At the risk of sounding cliched, it’s a roller-coaster ride: through destruction, intrigue, murder and chaos.

Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.

Book Review: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is one of those books that made such an impact on its release that it has become a movement as much as a book. The new thirtieth anniversary edition continues the quirkiness of the trilogy, featuring a badge, postcards and a DIY cover with a selection of stickers. For those new to the Hitchhiker phenomenon and now slightly puzzled, yes there are five volumes in the trilogy.

Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.