Busy, y'say..?

Absolutely run off my feet at the moment; mostly with work-related projects, which is absolutely great.

In brief:

Jo and I were guests of Pete and Nicky Crowther (of PS Publishing fame) last weekend, at their absolutely wonderful home on the East Yorkshire coast. Their house is one of our very favourite places on the entire planet: partly because it contains a veritable cornucopia of sf stuff - books, toys, DVDs, memorabilia; decades worth, and it would take a decade to read / watch / play with it all - but mostly because it's home to Pete and Nicky, who are two of our very favourite people (an opinion widely shared in genre fiction circles, I know) and spending time with them is always an absolute joy. We ate, we drank, we laughed. A lot. Of all three. And we watched Hollywoodland, which was... interesting. Dark, and definitely... interesting.

We also thrashed out a last few remaining issues on the PS website re-build, which means I'll now be able to crack on with that project as soon as possible. Got another few jobs to finish as well, all of which are tantalisingly close to completion, as well as a few new ones in the pipeline. Plus, I'm off down to London on Thursday to have lunch with a few of the fine folks from Gollancz Books and meet with a certain Mssr. Lynch, a word-smith whose acquaintance I'm absolutely dying to make. Will tell you all about it later next week, all being well.

Then on Friday afternoon Jo and I are heading down to Derby for Saturday's Alt.Fiction event, which I'm also thoroughly looking forward to. It'll be a great chance for us to catch up with a whole load of fantastic people that we haven't seen since last year's Fantasycon (or perhaps last month's Eastercon, or even last weekend...) and hopefully we'll get a chance to talk to everyone I've been saying "catch you at Alt.Fiction!" to for the past few weeks. Packed panel programme allowing.

So, yes, incredibly hectic schedule just now, absolutely loads going on. And I'm afraid that it does all rather mean that I might not be posting properly until after the weekend. I'll do my best to prep a couple of bookish entries sooner rather than later. Six hours of quite, quite wonderful reading time on the train to and from London on Thursday should help no end with that. Luxury!

April 24, 2007 | Filed Under Life, Work | 3 Comments

Genre Cover of the Month - Hmmm…

Sorry folks, but I haven't quite managed to get my act together and post the second GCOTM poll just yet. As a result, I think I might need to have a bit of a re-think about the general concept...

Trophy image by 'fishing' via sxc.hu The first poll went well, with 97 votes registered before I closed it (which, I believe, means it was actually statistically relevant) and I got some very good email feedback in terms of how useful this sort of thing could be for publishers and booksellers alike. The trouble is, it obviously requires a timely commitment from me, in terms of performing the necessary post-writing and image-manipulation admin, in order to get the new item out for the beginning of a given month. And I obviously missed the boat for March (apologies to everyone who sent in suggestions, but please see yesterday's post on work scheduling for possible reasons why...)

So, what do you folks think? I could make it a quarterly thing rather than monthly to begin with, and then if interest really does take off I could increase the frequency. Or I could just post individual examples of what I - or anyone else who cares to nominate a cover - thinks is a great bit of effective cover design, and we could then discuss individual cases on their relative merits. Or should I focus on comparing and contrasting - editions prepared for different markets, similarly themed / targeted titles, that sort of thing - instead? Or do a bit of all of the above?

Lots of possibilities, and it is a subject area I'm definitely interested in exploring further. I'm just wondering what the most effective way forward might be and what you folks might be interested in reading about. Answers on a comment-shaped postcard would be most welcome...

April 18, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Books, Marketing, Publishing | 5 Comments

Work in Progress: bit of spare capacity, if you're interested…

One of my major clients (a public / private sector organisation based here in Manchester) has had to make budget cuts this year, so they've cut my contracted hours from 15 to 7.5 per week.

Planner image by 'nosheep', via sxc.hu This is, of course, entirely fair enough and it does come with the bonus of freeing up some of my scheduled work time to focus in on some other projects that I've been meaning to get my teeth into for a while.

And if there's anyone out there who has a website that needs building, or a genre-fiction related project that they'd be interested in getting my input on, please do feel free to get in touch.

In the meantime, here's a quick run-down of what I've got in the pipeline, just to give you an idea of the sort of projects I'm currently involved in and particularly interested in working on:

Adam Roberts and I are currently re-designing his old website at www.adamroberts.com. The new one will be chock-ful of Wordpressy goodness and will allow Adam to tinker to his heart's content (he's a great web-tinkerer, is our Adam... ;)
I'm also building a blog-based website for John Berlyne's family business, the North Star Delicatessen. It's a great deli based in South Manchester, that serves great coffee (I can definitely vouch for that), and John really gets the whole blogging thing, so it should be a very lively and interesting site to visit, whether you live in his cathcment area or not, and especially if you're a bit of an amateur gourmand, like I am.
I'm about to re-launch myself back into the major overhaul of the PS Publishing website that I started earlier in the year. It's been strategically sidelined for a while recently - largely due to the huge amount of work that Pete Crowther has been putting into his trip to the World Horror Convention in Canada, where he was one of the Guests of Honour - but will shortly be back on track with a vengeance. The new site will be great - full e-commerce facility, a regularly-updated blog, tonnes of info about the books and their authors. Looking forward to getting stuck back into that later on this week.
Later in the year I'll be working on full-scale websites for both Joe Abercrombie and Jane Johnson, whose holding pages / micro-sites went live in the last couple of weeks.
I'll be running a six-monthly site update for Les Edwards (and his alter-ego Edward Miller ready for July 1st, so there'll be a stack of new artwork for you to feast your eyes on.
I'll also be building new sites for three new clients, all of whom I'm very pleased about and looking forward to working with immensely... and whose names I'll reveal once the work itself is under way (not that I'm superstitious, but...)
And finally, I'm planning on launching at least one, maybe two new blogs. One will be for me to talk about my freelance work and provide links to interesting articles about website content management, online copyrwriting etc. elsewhere. The other I'm not saying too much about at the moment, but it will be a very focused, topical blog that I hope will prove both useful and interesting to a wide range of folks. Mysterious, much..?

Should be a damn good summer!

April 17, 2007 | Filed Under Work | 4 Comments

Exo-review: Dave Hebblethwaite on The Solaris Book of New SF

David Hebblethwaite, a fine fellow who used to contribute regular and always-thoughtful reviews to the old TAO site, has a review of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction - which I mentioned myself a while back - posted over at SFSite.com.

It's interesting to note that we seem to share pretty much the same opinion about most of the content; particularly in the case of James Lovegrove's 'The Bowdler Strain' and Stephen Baxter's 'Last Contact'. Although in the case of the latter, whilst Dave and I both agree that it was an extremely powerful tale from an emotional and cathartic point of view, he had problems with the inherent science of the story, which I had to admit wasn't something that even crossed my radar when I was reading it.

I confess, though: I do have an extremely un-scientific background and so I do tend to read short fiction - even short science fiction - much more for the interaction of the characters than for whatever speculative and / or extrapolative scientific elements might be used to support the narrative. To be honest, I'm generally quite happy if everything is black-boxed neatly away, just so long as the principle protagonists are interesting.

All-in-all it's a very fair and well-balanced review with some good, solid analysis from Dave; worth reading if you're contemplating
picking up the anthology (which you jolly well should be...)

Edit, 17.04.07 Via the always-excellent Velcro City Tourist Board, a link to a David Soyka penned Strange Horizons review that compares and contrasts the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction with Pyr's Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge. Interesting reading again, well worth a look.

April 16, 2007 | Filed Under Books | Leave a Comment

Take a look: KrazyDad.com's Graphic Novel Explorer

Via When Gravity Fails, a link to a rather fun (but, by the sounds of things incredibly intricate and difficult to write) Flash application by Jim Bumgardner of KrazyDad.com, the graphic novel explorer.

Cover images are collated from Amazon.com, organized by price and dominant colour and then arranged on-screen in a random field of mini-images, each of which expands into a larger image when you mouse-over, and that you can then click on to get more info on at Amazon.com.

So far, Jim has also put together something similar for the covers of assorted science fiction magazines and the cover history of MAD Magazine.

I reckon it's a great way of making random discoveries and something that could have come in very handy back when I was a bookseller, given the number of "I can't remember the title, but the cover was green..." enquiries I used to get.

I also think it would make be great as the visual equivalent of a Tag Cloud if it was released as a blog widget, although judging by a quick read of Jim's methodology, that might not be do-able. But still, you could load up a database field with ISBNs and have the information pulled from your Amazon of choice into a personalised cover-cloud on your own site. It would be a great way of letting your readers know what sort of books you were most interested in.

April 16, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Comics & GNs | 2 Comments

Exo-review: Steve Flanagan on Alice in Sunderland

My good buddy Joe Gordon of the FPI Blog points me in the direction of a review of Bryan Talbot's Alice in Sunderland by Steve Flanagan on his blog Gad, Sir! Comics! (a blog I'll be sticking in my Google Reader for future reference).

Steve's review is intriguingly inventive - at least, it's not a technique that I've seen before, and neither has Joe, and I reckon he'll have seen more comics reviews than most - because he's created a panel-based review of the title and has drawn himself into the frames as a cartoon narrator; neatly echoing the style of Alice in Sunderland itself (so Joe tells me; I haven't gotten hold of a copy myself yet).

It's certainly a refreshing change from seeing paragraphs and paragraphs of prose and makes the review much more readable as well as highly memorable. I reckon Steve may well have set a new standard for reviewing graphic media: by doing so in a graphic medium. Great stuff.

April 16, 2007 | Filed Under Books | Leave a Comment

New client website goes live: JoeAbercrombie.com

Another initial page of content went live as of yesterday; it's been a good couple of weeks on the work-front. This one is for a brand new client, and someone I'm particularly thrilled to be building a website for, given that I really, really enjoyed his first book or two.

Currently www.joeabercrombie.com is a holding page containing some information about the first two books in his The First Law series: The Blade Itself and Before They Are Hanged, as well as a mailing list sign-up form and an email contact address. Joe and I will be working on a much more comprehensive site later in the year; the target is June / July (ish), work-load (Joe's) permitting.

Again, it's a simple design, using the parchment background to reflect the cover-theme of The Blade Itself. The only thing I might do differently, thinking about it, is improve the header, try to put it into a gothic-serif font to try to match the book's lettering. That would look better, but give Google less relevancy-matching to get its teeth into, but then the primary domain should grab Google's attention quite nicely. I'll think I'll see how it goes for now.

And as always, any comments or feedback - or thoughts as to what sort of content you'd like to see on the finished site - would be gratefully received!

April 14, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Marketing, Work | Leave a Comment

Very Highly Recommended Reading - Red Seas Under Red Skies, by Scott Lynch

I've been sitting here for about twenty minutes trying to work out how to tell you how much I thoroughly enjoyed - no, absolutely loved - Red Seas Under Red Skies, Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastards follow-up, without committing an act of wanton spoilerage. And you know what? I'm sorry, but I don't think I can do it, so...

This Recommended Reading piece contains spoilers. If you haven't read the book yet and want to avoid them, look away NOW!

There. I hope you have been suitably warned.

I'll start by saying that Red Seas... is one of the very best second novels I've ever read. If anything it's an improvement on the first in the series; which wasn't necessarily guaranteed to be the case, what with the worry that the dreaded 'second novel syndrome' might have struck. By which, I'm alluding to that horrible condition whereby the pressure of deadline and expectation conspires to rob an author of their burgeoning powers at the most critical stage of their fledgling career; resulting in their turning out a far inferior piece of work to the one that they spent six years slaving over to get into print as their debut.

But rest assured that this is most definitely not the case with Red Seas.... Oh, no. Far, far from it.

If you loved The Lies of Locke Lamora and have been crying out for a second instalment that takes the essence of the first novel and builds on the same sword, sorcery and swashbuckling atmosphere - of high adventure in the lowest of low fantasy settings - to create a sequel of equal adrenaline-fuelled excitement and descriptive delight, then your wishes have been answered. Red Seas Under Red Skies is, once again, a caper saga of immense imaginative flair, with a plot that twists and turns at breakneck pace as our heroes hurtle from one sticky situation and death-defying act of derring-do to another.

Locke and Jean have a truly grand plan this time around - a plan that will surely march them headlong into their devoutly hoped-for life of unending ease and luxury - as they prepare to stage the heist of their careers to-date: stealing all they can get their mitts on from one of the most secure and reputedly thief-proof gambling establishments in the known world. Until, that is, their plans are rudely interrupted by a despot in desperate straits; one who requires our boys to head out to sea - unfamiliar ground indeed for our two city -born and -bred protagonists - and foment a buccaneer rebellion, in order to speed his own return to prominence. Oh yeah, and to secure their loyalty, he's tricked them both into swallowing a slow but surely deadly poison, and only his tame alchemist has the antidote... Plot-twists, y'say? Oh, aye, skipper. Plot-twists a-plenty, right up th' t'gallant.

On the other hand: if you thought that The Lies of Locke Lamora was a fantastic debut, but have been hoping that Lynch would take the opportunity of a second novel to build on that initial sound basis and deliver a genuine development of both his main characters and his milieu - in addition delivering another cracking yarn - then once again, you're in luck. Character-wise the onus is once again very firmly on Locke and Jean and their heartfelt efforts to remain extant in the face of ever-increasing odds. But there's a great deal more depth imparted to both characters this time around, and a lot of the character development concerns the changes in their relationship. Initially those changes are brought about by Locke's reaction to the events of the first installment, but later, as Jean discovers that's there's much more to life than being a bodyguard and sidekick to the Thorn of Camorr - regular and highly energetic fucking, for instance - the emphasis of their relationship is altered, and Lynch charts it in such a way that it enhances the development of the plot, rather than getting in the way of the ripping yarn in progress.

I think the subtlety of the development really has to be experienced to be fully appreciated. I will say, though, that I thoroughly enjoyed the way Lynch skilfully foreshadowed one of the key scenes on the book with that flash-forward in the prologue. It was skilfully done indeed, because that vignette became key to the way in which I, as reader, was encouraged to really focus in on the two men and their changing relationship. I ended up reading the text more closely than if I'd been along purely for the action sequences. I found myself measuring the changes that occurred against the apparent situation revealed at the start of the book, and from there speculating and attempting to draw my own conclusions (often erroneously) on the basis of the clues imparted. It's a great way of immersing the reader even further into the narrative and encouraging their full participation in the book. Great technique.

An essential element in this process - indeed in the whole narrative - was one element that managed to rise above and beyond even the fantastic plotting and superb characterisation. The dialogue in Red Seas... was, once again, absolutely magnificent. I said in a recent recommendation of Joe Abercrombie's Before They Are Hanged that effective and well-delivered dialogue is rapidly becoming one of the major keys to my enjoyment of a lot of the fiction I read and right now, I think it would be a very close call indeed between Lynch and Abercrombie as to who is the most proficient. Both authors demonstrate a quite wonderful ear for the patterns and rhythms of speech and conversation, and neither is afraid to show off a little: no dumbing-down or retreating into safe cliché for either of these authors; likewise there's a bare minimum of anachronistic modernisms to distract from the flow. Just dialogue that's rich, full, varied, consistent and above all, hugely characterful. Quite simply a joy to read.

Okay, I do have just the one (relatively minor) criticism of Red Seas..., which is that it felt a little too obviously cinematic in places: think Ocean's 11 meets The Curse of the Black Pearl, albeit without the undead pirate element. But then, perhaps this was, once again, a deliberate device intended to enhance the audience's immersion in the book: an apparently familiar plot-structure intended to lull the reader into thinking that they know the score; thereby helping the coming plot twists to achieve maximum impact?

In any case, it bloody well worked. Maximum impact indeed, from a writer who's still only on his second novel. I'm absolutely delighted that Lynch was able to rise to a repeat of his own previously high-set bar and deliver a truly terrific read, one that constantly had me grinning from ear to ear as I progressed - except for those scenes of very definite and quite poignant tragedy that conjured up tears rather than laughter - and one that I was truly sorry to finish.

And that, for me, is one of the clearest marks of a damn good book: when you get to the end and just wish there had still been a couple more chapters to go.

Red Seas Under Red Skies is a definite early contender for my Book of the Year, and I'm now on major tenterhooks for part three (especially after that ending...) and thoroughly intrigued to see what direction Lynch takes the Gentlemen Bastards in next. Bring on the third instalment!

Author info: www.scottlynch.us
Ordering info: Amazon.co.uk
Publication info: June 21st 2007, Gollancz Books (UK)

April 12, 2007 | Filed Under Books | 1 Comment

One day in Chester - Eastercon Highlights

Jo and I thoroughly enjoyed our day at Eastercon on Saturday. The sun was shining down on Chester when we arrived, and we were very nearly diverted by the Chester Food & Drink Festival, which was going on in a large marquee next to the car park where we dropped off the motor. But instead we girded our loins, tightened our belts and plunged bravely into the gloom of the Chester Crowne Plaza, handing over our brace of one-day membership fees on the door.

At this point, we were both handed name-badges emblazoned with the word 'Saturday'; laminated to within an inch of their lives and - in the absence of permanent marker pens - with no chance to say anything else. Possibly the least-useful con-badge in history (there were a lot of anonymous "Saturdays" - I am not a day of the week! I am a free fan! - around), but you can see the appeal to the organisers of the mass-printing, and hey, if we'd bothered to register in advance, we could have had our moniker-of-choice included as well (as we later discovered). No matter.

The dealer's room was healthily populated, and I finally got a chance to say hello to Niall Harrison (pron. Neil, btw, in case like me you had no idea) who was manning a friend's bookstall. Niall is one of those unfortunate people who is even taller than I am (I'm 6'2" and trying to get a comfortable bus / theatre / 'plane seat is murder, so for Niall it must be pure hell) and alas, I was so stunned by this relative rarity that I made an inadvertent, knee-jerk, tall-joke gaff (with the emphasis on 'jerk'). Niall, I apologise, you must be heartily sick of hearing that sort of thing... and after he'd said I looked a lot younger than he expected, as well. For shame. And then he gave us a whole pile of the BSFA's Vector and Focus magazines (Niall is the editor of the former) to peruse as well. Gaah! Another classy foot+mouth combo from Ariel there...

Our trip to the dealer's room also resulted in a canny purchase of a hardback copy of Adam Roberts' collection of 'stories that never were and might never be', Swiftly (published by Night Shade Books), for a very reasonable tenner (from Niall's friend's stall, as it happened). Bargain!

Mind you, I was later trumped by John 'smug shopper' Berlyne, who found a pristine proof copy of Joe Abercrombie's debut The Blade Itself for a paltry three quid! Gaaaah! If you're interested, it'll probably be on eBay shortly, although you can expect the asking price to be a fair bit steeper...

On the way to the bar I made a point of saying hello to Paul Raven - better known as 'Armchair Anarchist' of Velcro City fame - who was looking none the worse for wear after an apparently quite titanic session the night (and most of the morning) before. Last to leave the bar on the first night of the Con: kudos. Also said hi to Andy Sawyer, of Liverpool University's Science Fiction Collection and repeated my oft-stated intention to get my arse over there one day for a visit. Honestly, I will. One day, just as soon as I'm not quite so darned busy...

Lunch followed, in the quite delightful company of Simon Spanton and Gillian Redfearn of Gollancz Books, plus the equally charming Stéphane Marsan, of France's top genre publisher Bragelonne, as well as the aforementioned Berlyne, and the inestimably wonderful Sandy Auden, my regular TAO / UKSFBN partner in crime.

Simon steered us to a very nice little Thai place he'd discovered / heard of / passed on the way into Chester, and a very good time was had by all. Pre-lunch, Gillian committed a wanton act of reading-list sabotage by thrusting a proof copy of Gollancz's Next Big Thing - the UK edition of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, which a lot of people are getting very excited about - into my convention bag. Which was most excellent of her (thank you, Gillian!) although now I have another 896 pages of must-read fantasy fiction to cram into my over-loaded queuing system. Woe is me... ;)

And on the way to the restaurant, an odd thing happened. We were wandering along one of Chester's main streets and I heard the sound of an electric violin. It was just starting to sweep into what sounded a whole lot like the opening bars of Ed Alleyne Johnson's 'Purple Electric Violin Concerto'. And sure enough, there he was, busking (and not for the first time) just a few feet from where I was standing...

I'm a big EA-J fan, ever since his work with New Model Army back in their Thunder and Consolation and Impurity days, and I've got a couple of his early CD's. I didn't realise that he had a new album out - a collection of cover versions of some of his favourite classic rock tracks from the '70s - so that was another tenner well-spent... and there are another couple of albums I haven't got yet, by the looks of things.

After lunch, the rest of the afternoon was spent back at the hotel, engaged in pleasant and entertaining conversation with John 'I'm a raconteur extraordinaire, me, luvvie' Berlyne, Sandy, and the occasional passer-by who sought rest at our table: shouts out to Paul Cornell, John Jarrold and Geoff Ryman, all of whom stopped by at some point, for varying lengths of time (some having the good sense to escape sooner than others...)

All in all, a damn fine day out. Looking forward immensely to Alt-Fiction in Derby at the end of the month, when we can do it all over again.

April 11, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Cons & Events, Music | 9 Comments

New client website goes live: JaneJohnsonBooks.com

I'm delighted to announce that I was able to launch a new site just before the weekend, for an author who's been a client of mine for a few years now.

Jane Johnson, longstanding editor at HarperCollins' Voyager Books imprint, is also a well-established author in her own right these days. She co-wrote the Gabriel King books with M. John Harrison, and then wrote a nordic fantasy trilogy under the pen-name Jude Fisher, as well as the official tie-in guides to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies.

More recently, she's written a series of children's fantasy books under her own name (the publisher's promo website - a very good one, too - is at www.janejohnson.eu). Her new novel, Crossed Bones is due to be published by Viking in February next year and so in advance of the launch of the book, Jane has aked me to put together a mini-site at www.janejohnsonbooks.com, which looks a little like this:

The new novel is a (potentially) bodice-ripping saga of high drama and romance, about the lives of two young women: one of whom was captured by Moroccan pirates in the 16th century, the other a modern girl who turns detective when she's given a piece of embroidery that was created by the first girl during her captivity. It's not a fantasy title, but should appeal to anyone who loves historical adventure tales.

Jane asked me to create a site that reflected the themes of captivity and mystery and had a feel for the Moroccan sands, where Jane herself now lives for half the year. Do please let me know what you think of the end result.

April 10, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Work | 3 Comments

Alt.Fiction mission control, we may have a problem…

Freaky pointing hand thing by 'CraigPJ' courtesy of sxc.hu Damn, this could be tricky and then some. I've just seen the programme for the Alt.Fiction event in Derby on April 28th. And frankly, it's rather superb...

I mean, just look at that line-up: top-name authors, publishers, editors... panel discussions, workshops, readings, interviews... and all going on at the same frickin' time.

I reckon a certain event organiser - one Mr Alex Davis esq. - has genuinely out-done himself this year. Considering it's a follow-up to last year's hugely impressive event this is some achievement, but it is going to leave me with quite a few 'who to go see?' dilemmas.

Seriously, there's enough in the way of programme items here to last an entire convention weekend, never mind the one day that Alt-Fiction actually occupies. Alex mate, please tell me you're going to be taping the sessions so I can check 'em out after the fact? I hate to think what I might be missing here...

Anyway, if you're not already booked in, sort it out! You'll be kicking yourself afterwards if you miss it (or the quarter of it you'll physically be able to see, anyhow...) Hey, here's a thought: book in with a friend, then you can go to alternate sessions and swap notes. It might be the best way forward.

April 10, 2007 | Filed Under Cons & Events | 4 Comments

Court of the Air promo movie

I do like a book promo when it's well-designed, well-executed and, above all, intriguing. In a comment on my recent post about my reading list backlog, Brian Edwards of SciFind.co.uk points me in the direction of the Flash promo for Stephen Hunt's The Court of the Air - hosted by SciFind - which meets all three criteria quite nicely.

It's stylish: smoothly animated and sound-tracked with mood music and sound effect rather than any sort of cheesy author's voice-over. It also introduces the main characters and their situation - chock full of deadly peril and drama-inducing conflict - without giving away any more information than you'd expect from the publishers' blurb, so no major spoilers.

So overall I'd say it had a generally beneficial effect; on balance I for one would be more likely to pick up the book having seen the trailer. Job done.

Okay, some folks might be put off by the stylised, comics-esque animation, but I don't think that would be too much of a problem among the book's likely core, genre reading audience. So it's targeted as well, which is all to the good.

Check it out: www.scifind.co.uk/courtoftheair/.

April 6, 2007 | Filed Under Animation, Books, Marketing | Leave a Comment

What really happened when the Death Star blew up…

Via When Gravity Fails, the Solaris Books editors' blog...

Love it :)

April 5, 2007 | Filed Under Animation, Humour | Leave a Comment

New-look UKSFBN goes live

I've spent the last few days' worth of spare time working on a new template for UK SF Book News, and I've installed it just this morning.

I've gone for a much more spacious, clean-looking design than the previous blue, blue and more blue, which I trink was a bit oppressive after a while. So currently the new scheme is predominantly red/grey, but I'm hoping to have a blue and a.n.other variant - with a CSS-based switching mechanism - to follow in due course, for those who prefer something other than red.

Do please let me know what you think, it would be great to get some feedback. Sensible criticism and helpful suggestions preferred, please; I'm not fishing for compliments...

April 5, 2007 | Filed Under Work | 2 Comments

Manchester physicist consults on Sunshine

It's not often that I'd expect to find myself linking out to Manchester University's website, but one story popped up in my RSS reader this week and caught my eye:

"A new $45m British-made science fiction film [Sunshine] is being unveiled this week and a physicist from The University of Manchester has played an important role in bringing it to the big screen.

"Dr Brian Cox, who can usually be found investigating how the universe was formed at the Centre for European Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, has been working with Sunshine scriptwriter and University of Manchester old boy Alex Garland (The Beach) and director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting and 28 Days Later)."

Good article, quite a bit of background info on the movie, not too many spoilers: www.manchester.ac.uk.

April 4, 2007 | Filed Under Movies | Leave a Comment

Neil Jordan to write & direct the Heart-Shaped Box movie

My good buddy Joe Gordon has just emailed to point me at an articles posted on Empire Online yesterday, which reports that Irish director Neil Jordan has signed up to sort out the movie version of Heart-Shaped Box (Joe's blogged it on the FP Blog already, naturally).

Anyway, the director is question has a track record (of sorts) in the horror genre at least, being the man behind The Company of Wolves. And hey, he can't really be blamed for Interview With the Vampire; with Tom 'least convincing vampire ever' Cruise in the lead role it was pretty much doomed to ignominious failure from the word 'go', despite anyone else's best efforts to rescue it.

And at least Mr Jordan needn't worry too much about the casting for HSB, seeing as we've already got that covered. But if he wants to drop me a line and talk through the finer points of the selection process, then I'd be happy to help out, naturally... :)

April 4, 2007 | Filed Under Books, Movies | 4 Comments

Back to the 'To be Read' pile…

I'm about 100 or so pages from the end of Scott Lynch's Red Seas Under Red Skies and loving every minute of it. I know what I'll be reading next: the latest instalment in the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher: Proven Guilty. I'm also half way through a rather excellent short fiction collection - Unbecoming by Mike O'Driscoll - which I'm definitely going to make time to finish.

After that, I'm diving back in to the to-be-read pile:

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod
Evil for Evil by K.J. Parker
The Terror by Dan Simmons
Bone Song by John Meaney
Death's Head by David Gunn
Icarus by Roger Levy
The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
Emperor by Stephen Baxter
Deadstock by Jeffrey Thomas
The Summoner by Gail Martin
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

And those are just the dozen I can remember off the top of my head, or from glancing around the office. That's without going anywhere near the eight shelves of assorted paperbacks in the corner, or the four (very large) boxes of unread books that have been in storage for the past couple of years, during the extension, or the whole bookcase worth of unread hardbacks that I re-shelved at the weekend, having finally gotten the dining room back into some sort of order.

Bloody hell, I'm going to have go give up my weekend computer gaming habit for a couple of years if I'm even going to make a dent! And probably a few other things as well. Television, definitely. Eating, maybe. Sleep, possibly (I can do without one night in three, right?)

I'm not the only one who suffers from this ongoing angst over the sheer volume of books I'll never have time to read (whole libraries I'll never be able to experience, dammit!), right? Or is it just a case of my life being too badly organised for words, while everyone else has everything all neatly squared away, with more time for reading than they know what to do with?

Anyway, are there any particularly strong recommendations from the above list, either for or against? Worked well last time, Ed recommended The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction and it was indeed a cracking read. Feel free to let me know what you reckon.

April 3, 2007 | Filed Under Books | 8 Comments

New Arrivals - late March '07

Another month, another batch of great new books that I really, really wish I had time to read...

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

I realised the other day - when this paperback edition of Gaiman's second (third) short fiction collection arrived - that I'm shockingly far behind with my Gaiman reading - I still haven't set aside time for American Gods, and I haven't even bought a copy of The Wolves in the Walls yet, nor much of his recent graphic novel output.

So, given my love of Gaiman's short fiction, and my (increasingly rash-seeming) vow to read more short fiction this year, I might have to bump this one up the list...

The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod

This is one I definitely want to read sooner rather than later, not least because my good friend Joe Gordon had some very good things to say about it when we were chatting by email a couple of weeks ago. I also want to read it while it's still topically speculative, instead of historically retrospective... well, hopefully things won't get quite so bad as Ken is forecasting in Execution Channel but then you just never know. After all, George Orwell's prediction of a Big Brother-obsessed mindless drone-society was only 20 or so years out... Mind you, I've never watched the TV series, so I don't know how faithful an adaptation it is...

Have also received hardback copies of The Intruders by Michael Marshall Smith, and Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box - both of which I've read and thoroughly enjoyed already - as well as John Meaney's Bone Song, which is right up there on the to-be-read list (which I really need to update sometime).

April 2, 2007 | Filed Under Books | 2 Comments

Genre Cover of the Month for February '07

We have a winner! With a very respectable 42% of the 98 votes cast in last month's poll, the GCotM accolade for Feb '07 goes to éditions Bragelonne's cover for their French-language translation of The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch: Les Mensonges de Locke Lamora.

Bragelonne cover for 'Les Mensonges de Locke Lamora'

I really liked this cover myself, for two reasons: firstly because I thought it might have been a Les Edwards / Edward Miller creation (although after a quick email to Les I discovered that this wasn't the case), and secondly because I'm a sucker for the architecture of imaginary places. I tend not to be all that good at visualising locations when I'm reading a book, so it's always fascinating to see how someone with some genuine artistic talent can interpret a scene or setting for a book I've enjoyed.

So yes, this cover would definitely have made me - personally - pick the book out from a table display. But then judging by the pattern of voting - an early lead for Ink, followed by a determined surge for both Les Menonges and Already Dead - perhaps the classic fantasy look doesn't have quite the same pull for everyone.

I'll see if I can get in touch with the editor, artist and author to get their individual take on the cover sometime this week. And I'll be posting the nominated covers for March later in the week as well; I want to look into a way of linking the poll to the original post with the cover images a bit better this month. I rather suspect that some folks might have been put off clicking on the poll because they didn't know what, exactly, they were voting for. And I likewise suspect that some folks ended up voting for the book, rather than what they considered, objectively and personally, to be the strongest cover.

Early days though, plenty of time to fine-tune as we go along, eh?

April 1, 2007 | Filed Under Art, Books, Marketing, Publishing | Leave a Comment