Sale to Nature Magazine

My short story Remember Yugoslavia? has been accepted by Nature magazine - my third sale to that well-known scientific journal. The magazine has a very tight word count limit for short stories, so it's quite tricky to end up with something suitable to submit to them.

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.

Eastercon Plans

It's a week until Eastercon, and I've been looking through the guest list to see who I might bump into. There are lots of people I've met before whom I'm looking forward to meeting up with again, plus several authors whose books I've read recently, agents, editors and others I'm hoping to see. Of course, with hundreds of people spread over a dozen or more rooms, much of it is down to chance. But I'm looking forward to it.

Graphic Novel Review: The Iron Moon

Recently I’ve been enjoying a bit of steampunk and my new discovery, graphic novels. The Iron Moon is a steampunk graphic novel, so I was pretty excited about reading it. It turned out to be great fun, mixing marvellous Victorian steam-powered inventions with aliens, Brunel-style space stations and cyborgs. Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.

Book Review: Steampunk'd

I’ve read a fair amount of steampunk recently, so an anthology entitled Steampunk’d was rather tempting. The stories in this anthology are mostly set in alternative Victorian settings, but there are even more alternate histories where the era is not named after the British monarch at all. The book features a fine selection of everything you might want from the genre – steam trains, dirigibles, goggles, inventors, gadgets.

Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.

Inside Every Successfull Greek

I discovered today that my story Inside Every Successfull Man was published last june in issue #512 of 9, the weekly SF / comics supplement of Free Press, the Greek national newspaper. This is the fifth appearance for this story, following:

English in Hub
English audio on ClonePod
Polish in Fahrenheit
Italian in Intercom SF

Unlike a few other translations, where I made the discovery by chance, tis time I was contacted by the publishers, who want to pay me. :o)

One Month to EasterCon

It's only a month until EasterCon - the British National Science Fiction Convention. Guests of honour this year include David Weber whose Honor Harrington series I enjoy, and David Hardy whom I met last year and later discovered was the illustrator for the Thomas Cook Galactic Tours brochure which I loved when I was a kid.

I'll only be there for the Saturday, but I'm looking forward to meeting up with numerous authors, artists, editors, publishers and agents again. I can only hope the results are as succesful as last year.

The Gondolier in Ukrainian

I've had no luck finding a Ukrainian SF market, so for your enjoyment, here is The Gondolier in Ukrainian.

Гондольєр

Автор: Гарет Д. Джоунз


Чорний ніс моєї гондоли плавно прорізав спокійну воду каналів. Це спокійне ремесло слугувало мені багато років, коли я перевозив пасажирів водними шляхами міста під направляючим мене перстом поколінь предків.

Сонце сідало над старовинним містом, перетворюючи воду на чорнильну стрічку, розкинуту серед елегантних будівель з піщанику. Я глибоко вдихнув прохолодне вечірнє повітря.

Чи було десь інше місце, чарівніше за це вражаюче місто каналів? Коли човен м'яко торкнувся причалу, я зупинився, щоб із задоволенням подивитись на Марс, що пломенів у сутінках на небі.

Кінець

Translated by Irina Mircha