BSFA Award Nominations

Nominations for the BSFA awards have started making their way to the BSFA and the nominations so far have been posted. As I thought inevitable, the fabulous artwork for The Immersion Book of Steampunk has been nominated, along with one of the stories from the anthology. It will be another couple of months before the shortlist is anounced.

Mentioned in Vector

In the latest mailing from the BSFA was the new issue of Vector, the critical journal of the BSFA, and there, in the midst of an article about comics, my name gets a mention. That was a nice surprise.

Saturday at EasterCon

I was at EasterCon in Birmingham on Saturday for the day, and had an excellent day of conversation and catching up. I arrived later than planned due to a train cancellation, only to find that the badge laminator was broken, so I had to lurk badgeless around reception and the arty show for a while. Even during that lurking period I met fantasy novelist Juliette McKenna, Dr Who script writer Paul Cornell, literary agent John Berlyne, BSFA Award-winning author Aliette de Bodard (though she didn’t know it at the time), and Angry Robot editor Lee Harris.

I only attended one panel item during the day – the interview with David Weber – and spent the rest of the day circulating among the fan lounge (drinking tea), the dealer hall, the restaurant / bar, the long corridor between, and various signing sessions.

Spread among those various locations I met (in randomly-remembered vaguely chronological order) authors such as Rebecca J Payne, Toby Frost, Ian R MacLeod, Charlie Allery, Gaie Sebold, multiply-translated Belgian author Frank Roger, Tricia Sullivan, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, James Swallow, Neil Beynon, David Weber, Ian Whates, Roy Gray (who will be appearing alongside me in the Escape Velocity anthology), Gareth L Powell, Lavie Tidhar, Colin Harvey, John Meaney, Ian Sales and Christopher Priest (who appears alongside me in the new issue of Focus). Plus literary agent John Jarrold, artist Andy Bigwood, Chris Teague of Pendragon Press, Jaap Boekestein of Dutch SF magazine Wonderwaan, Terry and Liz Martin of Murky Depths, BSFA Orbit Coordinator Terry Jackman and the organisers of the UK steampunk Asylum Weekend Lady Elsie and Major Tinker. I also saw Ian Watson in the toilets, but it didn’t seem like an ideal place to strike up a conversation.

This year’s double-sided badges meant it was much easier to spot people’s names, but even so there were others who passed in the crowd and disappeared before their name had registered. I’m sure there are others I spoke to whom I’ve neglected to mention, but it was one big whirlwind of conversation and I was glad to meet all of you.

Focus on Languages

The latest edition of Focus, the BSFA's mazine for writers has arrived. It includes my article Speaking in Tongues in which I discuss my experiences of being translated and published in numerous languages. There are also articles from Gareth L Powell, Aliette De Bodard and Christopher Priest, among others.

Two Magazines

I've read 2 magazines over the past few days:

Jupiter XXIX, with 5 stories, of which I'm undecided as to my favourite. Mike Wood's The Bottle Garden or Rosies Oliver's Agents of Repair.

The latest edition of the BSFA' critical journal Vector also arrived. The theme this time was children's and YA genre fiction. Lots of books were highlighted, none of which I read as a child. I talked about my early reading habits in this post. What were you reading in the old days?

Translation Experiences

Drawing on my experiences over the past couple of years of having my stories translated and published around the world, I've written an article on the subject for the benefit of other writers. It should be appearing in the next issue of Focus, the BSFA's magazine for writers.

Reading List

The BSFA Award shortlist has been anounced, and unfortunately I've not read any of the 4 short-listed novels. I don't see how I'll have tome to read them before April either.

I've read Albedo One #37 and Interzone #226 in the past couple of weeks, as well as At All Costs, the latest Honor Harrington book from David Weber. I say latest, but it seems to be 4 years old. It's taken me that long to get round to it. I've now started Colin Harvey's Winter Song and my contributor copy of Galactika finaly arrived today. That won't take long as I can't read Hungarian.

Lined up I have:

Cherie Priests two books Boneshaker and Clementine, which will be my first steampunk novels
The Light Of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter
Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, one of my favourite authors
Journeys: Stories by Ian R. Macleod, his forthcoming new collection

Focus on Writing

The latest edition of the BSFA's Focus magazine for writers has arrived. It always has a nice mixture of articles - advice on writing techniques from succesful authors, and articles on all kinds of writing-related subjects. This issue includes my article What Are They Thinking? in which I've selected comments from numerous editors whom I interviewed last year. I'm very proud to be appearing in this specialist publication.

Reading Schedule

I’m currently in the midst of Tony Ballantyne’s fantastic robot novel Twisted Metal, a book that takes robots as far away from Asimov as I’ve ever seen. This was released in May, so the review will be a little late. Lined up I have an E-ARC of The Tel Aviv Dossier by Nir Yaniv, who edits a Hebrew SF zine, and Lavie Tidhar, whose name appears in the TOC of almost every magazine and anthology of note. I then have Warren Fahy’s Fragment, that promises to be a cross between Lost and Jurassic Park. Both of these are released today.

I’m expecting the latest issue of Jupiter soon, and a mailing from the BSFA I think, hopefully including my article in Focus. That’s my reading schedule full for the rest of July.

Return of The Editors

It’s been a few months since I last posted an editor interview, although you can still find links to all of them on the right-hand sidebar. I distilled some of the wisdom I gained from the interviews into an article for writers and this is due to appear in the next edition of the BSFA’s Focus magazine in July.

With this approaching I decided it’s about time I hunted up some more editors to interrogate. There are still a couple of genre magazine editors I didn’t get round to last year, plus I’m expanding my horizons to include small press editors. I’m still sticking to the UK, so if you know of any editors you’d like to see interviewed, or you are one, drop me a line.

I already have three lined up, and the first of those will be on-line next week.

PostScripts Sampler

I’ve been reading the BSFA special PostScripts sampler over the past few days. It has stories by some very well known authors. I particularly enjoyed three of the stories:


Footvote by Peter Hamilton – Enjoyably entertaining and satirical

Comber by Gene Wolf – A fascinating idea with great characterisation

Mind Wars by Paul McCauley – A mind-bendingly clever twist on an old favourite


I’ve been very pleased with the extra little magazines and booklets from the BSFA this year. Along with the regular magazines and newsletter they are well worth the membership.

Voted

I read the last couple of BSFA Award short story nominees at the weekend. They’re all strong stories, though not necessarily the ones I would have chosen. My vote has been cast, with only a week to spare until the presentation at Eastercon.

As I’ve probably mentioned, I can’t make it this year, so I’ll be looking out for reports form those who do get there.

I'm now reading the new Interzone, with the Focus fiction special waiting patiently behind it...

So much to read…

I started reading Eclipse Two last night and enjoyed the first story immensely. Apparently this volume has more SF than the first so I’m looking forward to reading the rest.

Meanwhile I’m getting a very short novel called Genesis and the last of Alan Dean Foster’s Pip & Flinx books to review. The latter is the sequel to Quofum that I read recently. I was also persuaded to take two earlier books from the series that hadn’t been reviewed so all four books should turn up this week.

Then Interzone arrived, with a brilliant cover again.

The latest BSFA mailing arrived in the same post. This includes Matrix and the special issue of Focus that includes the BSFA short story competition winners. Plus a special booklet reproducing the BSFA Award nominated short stories. I need to read that pretty quick so I can get my vote in. Plus a special PostScripts taster with 100 pages of fiction from some very well known names. All five of these magazines arrived 10 minutes before I had to leave for work this morning, just giving me time to open them and flick feverishly through, vowing to read each one straight away.

If only I didn’t need to sleep at some point.

In Focus

After carrying out a number of interviews with genre magazine editors last year, I put together an article based on some of the common themes and comments that I got from them. It was lost in the email wilderness for some time until the arrival of Focus magazine last week reminded me to chase it up. It’s now been accepted by Focus, the BSFA magazine for writers and will appear in the next regular issue in the summer.

Writing, Interrupted

The latest BSFA magazines arrived on Thursday, including Focus, the magazine for writers. In his editorial, Martin McGrath bemoans the fact that he didn’t write much last year and resolves to write 500 words per day this year.

That’s just what I need to do, I thought, to avoid writing nothing for weeks on end. I set a more modest goal of 200 words though. The results?

Thursday : 1600 words
Friday : 350 words
Saturday : 250 words
Sunday: Windows won’t load. I need to re-install it, which will apparently wipe the hard drive.

Now to find a friendly PC shop that can back up the hard drive first and re-install the software.

:o(

Latest BSFA Mailing

The latest BSFA magazines arrived this weekend and included the third Special Editions booklet. This one contains three stories from recent Elastic Press anthologies, two of which I’ve read. At the end of each story there are a couple of quotes from reviews – including a quote from my review of The Turing Test.

I feel all important now. :o)

Nominations

It’s that time of year again when I start compiling my list of favourite stories of the year. I have 14 so far – stories that I’ve found entertaining, enjoyable, touching or just fantastic. I’m trying to whittle this down to a shorter list to nominate for the BSFA award.

For the first time ever I’ve actually read some novels that were published this year so I may nominate one of them too. I’m usually reading books that are up to 50 years old.

I’ve had five stories published this year too, four in the Roadmaker series published in Jupiter and Travel by Numbers in Nature, should you fancy nominating any of them.

Not that I’m kidding myself into thinking they have much of a chance. Jupiter is a small press magazine so presumably doesn’t have as great a circulation as some magazines. Nature has a circulation in the hundreds of thousands, but how many of those readers are also BSFA members? It may seem unfair that good stories from some venues will be overlooked (and I’m not talking about my own stories here), but that’s just demographics. Awards that rely on nominations will naturally receive more nominations for publications with higher circulations. The alternative is an award decided by judges, but this is equally unfair as it depends entirely on their personal choice. I’m sure when you see my list of favourite stories at the end of the year you won’t have liked half of them.

I guess it’s best to be philosophical about awards. If at some point in the future I ever receive one, I’m sure I won’t be worried about how it was decided. So I’ll put in my nominations and see if many others agree with my choices.

Book Review: Celebration - 50 Years of the BSFA

‘Celebration’ is a wonderful-looking anthology with seventeen new stories commemorating the 50th anniversary of the British Science Fiction Association. The cover art by Vincent Chong is certainly eye-catching and the stories are from some of the UK’s best known genre authors.


Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.

I'm in Focus

The latest Focus and Vector magazines arrived at the weekend from the BSFA. On the back inside cover of Focus – the magazine for writers – is an advert for Jupiter, with my name listed among the contributors, along with Neil Beynon. The Flash Fictioneers are rather well represented in fact. Martin McGrath is the editor and there’s an article by Paul Raven.

Meanwhile I’m in the early stages of planning an article for the next issue of Focus. I’ve had indications of interest in the idea, so I shall start work on it pretty soon. It’s quite daunting to think about writing some non-fiction for a change, but I guess it’s no different from some of the waffle on this blog. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Also in Focus is the news that the BSFA is to take over administration of the James White Award. This gave me the sudden and pleasing thought that I no longer qualify to enter that contest, or others such as Writers of the Future. My three professional sales rule me out.

One of the other articles was about planning a novel. I found that particularly enlightening as I tend to keep plots and plans in my head. There are some very practical suggestions that I think I shall adopt.

Over in Vector magazine I glanced through the book reviews to find that a large proportion of them were of fantasy books. Nothing against fantasy, but I thought I joined the British Science Fiction Association?!

Celebration - A Taster

This year the BSFA have begun publishing a series of Special Editions booklets. The first, arriving with Matrix magazine last week, is entitled Celebration – A Taster, designed as a foretaste of the forthcoming BSFA 50th anniversary anthology Celebration. The booklet contains an introduction to the anthology and three additional short stories.

Jerie is a tale of far future exploration by Adam Roberts and, like my previous experience of his work, is peppered with fabulous sounding pseudo-scientific jargon. It’s an energetic tale of the urge to explore, and where it might take you.

Ian Watson’s A Daffodil Jacket, or The Misadventures of Sebastian in Kyiv is essentially an anecdotal tale of a trip to the European poetry convention in Ukraine. Normally I might have dismissed it is an amusing and pleasant enough little account, but coming hot on the heals of Eastercon gave it so much more depth and made it thoroughly enjoyable.

Who’s Who is Chaz Brenchley’s tale of the ethical dilemmas that develop when money can buy anything and science can do just about anything. It provides a satisfying moral for the characters, without sounding moralistic to the reader. It’s a story that almost feels like you could have seen it on the 10 O’Clock News.

I saw Chaz Brenchley in passing at Eastercon last week, and both Adam and Ian were also there. Of course, with over 1100 people present, spotting somebody in the crowd is quite difficult, especially when you’ve never seen them before, or only seen a small mug shot on a web page! The name badges were quite light too, so they tended to flap about and become difficult to read. There are a couple of authors I’d like to have spoken to, had I had the chance. Maybe next year, if I can make it to Bradford.