Book Review: The Peacock Cloak by Chris Beckett

I enjoyed Chris Beckett’s first collection, the award-winning ‘The Turing Test’, and his recent novel ‘Dark Eden’, so I was very happy to get a copy of his new collection ‘The Peacock Cloak’ to review.

Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.

Relativity Reviewed

Escape Velocity: The Anthology has been reviewed again, and my story Relativity was described as:

A short story with impact. I saw the twist coming but the mental image still retained strength.

Matryoshka Now Online

My short story Matryoshka, inspired by the Russian dolls of the same name, is now on line in the February issue of Interstellar Fiction.

Russian Story Sale

I'm very please to announce another stiry sale. Not in Russian, but set in Russia, Matryoshka has been accepted by online webzine Interstellar Fiction and is due to appear in February. A good start to the new year for me.

Book Review: The Soul Consortium by Simon West-Bulford

 

 

Simon West-Bulford coincidentally works on the same site as me though we'd never met before the book was released, 'The Soul Consortium' is a slick-looking volume with an eye-catching cover, though the generous type face means it's not as long as it looks. It is however a gripping read.

The setting is in the far future. I mean really far. Think Greg Egan squared. The last human, Salem Ben, lives alone with an AI, immersing himself in the recorded lives of the dead to pass the millennia. The high-tech setting, quantum physics and esoteric philosophy at first glance lead you to believe you're in for a hard SF extravaganza, but there's far more to the book than that.

Detecting aberrations in the Soul Sphere where countless human lives are recorded and stored, Salem Ben decides to investigate by re-living the affected lives. The technology is totally immersive, so these lives are lived and told from the viewpoint of those characters. An interesting selection they are too - a serial killer and a psychic from our own past, a monk from the far future and the ages-old woman who created the Soul Consortium. The lives they lead are told in gritty realism, with all the horrors of their existence played out in sometimes visceral detail. They are all convincing and the monk in particular becomes a fascinating story in his own right.

The way these past lives gradually link up, adding hints and weaving threads, connected by Salem Ben's own slowly revealed history, make this a stand-out debut. I was thoroughly drawn in and enjoyed it to the end.

A Picture of a Thousand Words

My collection of print magazines and anthologies containing my stories.

Another Year of Writing

The end of another year approaches, and I look back to find its been a slow year for writing and publishing. There have been lots of other things happening to take my time and attention away from writing, and I have been persisting in my attemps to break into the top fiction markets, which inevitably means more stories rejected and less published.

I've had three stories published this year, all translations and all three new languages for me: Scottish Gaelic, Danish and Dutch. I also self-published a story for the first time, getting to grips with e-publishing and its complexities.

I've written six new short stories of between 500 and 6000 word, which is actually more than I thought I'd done. I also spent quite some time working on the plot and outline of my new novel Promised Land, though I've barely started on the writing itself. I also spent a lot of time editing my TV series screenplay, which I found rather enjoyable. Still no idea if anything will come of it though.

Next year: who knows? More of the same, though in what quantity I have no idea.

World Wire Web in Dutch

The Dutch translation of my story World Wire Web appears in the new issues of SF Terra, the third language for this story and the 23rd language I've been published in.

Czeck Review - Phases of Gravity

Just in case you don't read English, you can now read my review of Dan Simmons' Phases of Gravity in Czeck, just in time for the release of the Czeck translation.

Steampunk Update

I noticed today that over on Goodreads, The Immersion Book of Steampunk has continuued to clock up ratings from readers. It now has a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars, which is pretty fabulous.