So - finally I get back to the blog.

My old PC is dead and gone and I’m currently running a cheap pile of junk until I can save up enough pocket money to properly upgrade… I’m gradually working my way back through recovered email - if I haven’t got back to you, I’m getting there. Still enough of my problems.

Or not.

I clicked on Forgotten Worlds website today, just to check whether anything was going on and to get the email address to chase up when they intended to publish “Be Aware” - a story of mine they’d promised to buy and print. And the message there read:

It is with deepest regret that I have to inform you; that as of today Forgotten Worlds has ceased publication.
If you have work that has been accepted by us we will be getting in contact with you over the next few days. If you have a submission being considered please take this as a notice of return.
We will also be in contact with all subscribers to arrange refunds.
John Cooper.

I don’t know how long that’s been up - there is no date - I haven’t heard about either my story or my subscription so I’m assuming not too long. It’s pretty depressing - another fiction magazine that’s gone bust (Farthing, Fiction, and Forgotten Worlds have all shut up shop in recent months - that’s “F”ing terrible).

But, as well as that noble stuff, they won’t be publishing my story. And now I’m not sure what to do with it. It wasn’t easy to place - it’s on the very edge of science fiction - it’s more a story about science/technology and what they do - plus it’s got nazis in it (which seems to make some editors cringe). But I’ve always liked the story. Almost everyone who has read it has said nice things about it - even when they were rejecting it - but it seems doomed never to get out there…

Meanwhile Hub have been holding on to “Home Protection” - a story of mine they first accepted for publication in May last year, they say they’re going to publish it but it still hasn’t appeared. It was first due out in September, then Christmas, then “within a fortnight”. Last week’s Hub email had a reprint from issue two (not that I begrudge Jetse de Vries the publicity) rather than a new story which is even more depressing. In four days it will be exactly a year since I emailed the story to Hub… they were still a print magazine then.

And I got a rejection this week for a story I’m really proud of that I wrote for a specific market who I thought would love it. They only liked it and I’ve got no idea what to do with it now.

As a “writer” I’m feeling a bit in the dumps right now.

Which brings me to Adam Roberts - while I was unable to post I read Adam’s response to the review of Land of the Headless I wrote for the latest issue of Vector. He was “discouraged”.

So not only am I feeling int the dumps. But I’m feeling like a bit of an arsehole as well.

So, let me make it clear for the record - on the whole I admire Adam Roberts’ work - enough so that I actually pay money for his novels. Enough so that when my review copy of Land of the Headless came through my door - it was the second copy on my desk and succeeded only in pushing that book to the top of my reading pile. So I was genuinely sorry that I didn’t like the book better. I take no pleasure in discouraging an author who I’ve been telling people to watch for a long time.

Adam Roberts is among the cleverest (I know he regards this as a frustrating epithet, usually because it is most often accompanied by a “but…” - but it remains a compliment in my book), most stylistically accomplished and most interesting of the current generation of British sf writers. He is also a quite distinct voice in British sf - there’s no post-cyberpunk hangover, no knowing nods to America, no action movie histrionics. He is capable, I believe, of one day writing a novel that might be called great.

But he hasn’t yet. Not that his work to date has been bad but there’s the nagging sense that he can do better.

Gradisil probably came closest to fulfilling his potential but while all his novels feature fantastic ideas, a compelling central character and unusual - often startling - voices - they all stutter and never quite deliver all they promise - thought that’s not to say there isn’t much in them to be enjoyed. Gradisil features a man falling from orbit to earth in an extended passage that is amongst the most memorable pieces of sf I’ve ever read. Land of the Headless - despite Mr Roberts thinking I found nothing positive in it - has a great argument about “god particles”, a shocking moment when the narrator meets “god” and effective battle scenes. Every one of his books delivers moments like these, moments that always make me smile.

Now I know it’s cheeky offering advice to a writer who has achieved far more than me, but if I was asked why I don’t think Adam Roberts has yet written the whole novel he’s clearly capable of in these perfect moments I would suggest that his weakness is in giving his protagonist a truly worthy antagonist. It’s clear he doesn’t want to just write about straightforward good guys versus bad guys (or even not so straightforward anti-heroes against even worse guys) but I find it frustrating that he doesn’t give his central characters opponents that are worthy of them - a really tightly defined, razor-edged conflict might make his stories really sing.

In Gradisil, for example, every American military and political character is an idiot. Now even if we allow that that might be the case in real life, it is still not a good reason to create characters like that in a piece of fiction because it cheapens what his “heroine” (for wont of a better word) achieves.

In Land of the Headless, instead of creating a realistically frightening, intrusive and controlling religious state capable of ruling over an entire planet (or more) and instilling discipline on vast populations, Mr Roberts sketches out a rough and ready foe - apparently consisting almost entirely of one cruel policeman that gives no sense of the oppression his characters must live under and no sense of the weight of forces his protagonist must find himself struggling against.

I can see that Adam Roberts doesn’t want to write simple x versus y stories - but I do think he needs to find a way to make the struggles of his protagonists more engaging - they need to grab the gut as well as the mind.

I stand by my review - looking back on it I can see why Adam would consider it harsh and perhaps I was guilty of playing to the stalls - playing up the easy targets and not spending as much time on the things I liked (but even then, I still I don’t think the review is entirely negative). In my defence it was a limited word review and I make no claims towards literary criticism - my English A Level is too distant a piece of history for that - I’m really only someone who tries to write about stuff I’ve read and watched in what I hope is an entertaining way.

As a writer would I want to have received the review I gave Adam Roberts?

No. I’d hate me. I’d want to shove my big-head down the nearest bog. I’d want to scream what the fuck do you know you useless nobody. So kudos to Mr Roberts for taking it on the chin.

If there’s one thing Adam Roberts can take solace from in my review of Land of the Headless it is that the fact is that he’s the author with the string of novels out there (two even since Land…) to be shot at by peabrains like me. While I can’t even seem to get a short story in print.