Joe Abercrombie on 'The Steel Remains'
Someone else has been granted an early sneak-peek at Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains. And it just so happens to be one of the authors of the sort of dark, intriguing, fantasy fiction that I was talking about in my own review, Joe Abercrombie, who concludes:
"I hesitate to say, 'if you like the works of x, y, or z, then give The Steel Remains a try,' because really it's pretty much unlike anything else, and that's why you should give it a try. You might love it, you might loathe it, but you'll certainly find it difficult to ignore..."
Read the full review over at Joe's blog.
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!
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.
New Arrivals - mid December '06
Another batch of books have come in for the Books Received section of UKSFBN, and once again there are a couple of pearls included that I'd particularly like to bring to your attention:
Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie
This one's going to cause me a real scheduling headache. Joe Abercrombie's debut novel, The Blade Itself was my definite fantasy highlight of 2006. It was an absolutely superb low-fantasy saga; chock full of action, adventure and incident, shot through with a very dry, witty sense of humour, and with none of the pomposity that the heroic fantasy genre is so prone to. Great reading, absolutely flew through it, Jo loved it as well. Part 2? Hell, yeah! (or, as Jo quite literally said upon picking up the book not ten minutes ago, "oooh! oooh!")
So, this one really demands to be shunted right to the front of my 'must read' queue... except that K.J. Parker's Evil for Evil is already occupying that spot, and I definitely want to read that one for pretty much the same reasons. And then I've got the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, John Connolly's Nocturnes and Gail Martin's The Summoner coming up hard on the rails... damn! Decisions, decisions...
The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
Another Gollancz proof that arrived in the same batch as the Abercrombie. I've been hearing some mixed background buzz about this one for a while; some say 'good', some say 'not sure'. But it looks like it'll fit into an oeuvre that I do have a definite affection for; you'd probably have to call it 'quasi-Victorian humourous melodrama' or something. Or then again, maybe not...
But you know the stuff I mean, anyway: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Mark Gattiss' The Vesuvius Club - which coincidentally I'd started reading the day before this one turned up - for instance. And I could theoretically include the recent Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G.W. Dahlquist in there as well, although to be honest that one was comparatively top-heavy on the melodrama and rather devoid of humour.
Hmmm. More headaches...
No Dominion by Charlie Huston
Not one that'll immediatly challenge for must-read top-spot, but a definite medium-term contender. This is the second in Charlie Huston's current series about a vampire-gang-dominated New York; no place for a determined loner vampire like Joe Pitt, who just wants to be left alone to live his un-death in peace. But his staunch neutrality makes him useful - and also potentially dangerous - to a whole range of factions in the continually ongoing gang turf war, so peace and quiet are likely to be two commodities in short supply.
Thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the series, Already Dead, after Jo bought a US copy from Amazon and then hit me with it until I agreed to read it. Urban vamp meets hard-boiled private eye, with everything wrapped up in a dark, grungy atmosphere that you could choke on. Orbit will be releasing the first couple of volumes in the UK early next year.
.
And finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention the three latest titles from PS Publishing, which also came in today: Julian - A Christmas Story by Robert Charles Wilson, Flavors of My Genius by Robert Reed, and The Voyage of Night Shining White by the much talked-about Chris Roberson. All, as it happens, with stunning artwork from a certain Les Edwards (or Edward Miller) as well.
All three look very interesting indeed, so that's three more for the already-groaning t.b.r. shelf... one day I really will have to win the lottery, just so I can actually afford the time to sit down and read all this potentially rather excellent material. I tell you, it's the only way it's ever going to happen...
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