I’ve just noticed that (since the end of the redesign/upgrade to 2.5) my RSS feed isn’t picking up messages posted here - can anyone passing by confirm whether or not they’re getting my posts on RSS feed?

Since I’m guessing I’ve broken something, can anyone who knows anything about RSS feeds suggest whether there’s anything I can do to reconnect people?

So I’m trying to write up some of the reviews I owe people (especially Eugie at The Fix whose been extraordinarily patient with me as I try - and abjectly fail - to put together a review of Strahan’s The Year’s Best SF and Fantasy that isn’t longer than the book - it’s coming soon I swear) - but, you know, when things are hard I end up being a bit rubbish and displacement activities kick in.

Which explains why I’ve been looking at my blog statistics (Ian Whates is still waiting on those film reviews I promised him a fortnight ago…)

More specifically I was looking at the countries of the top level domains of the people (and bots) who have visited the blog since January (and I want to review Quercus One: The West Pier Gazette here…)

So “hi!” to the usual suspects (you .com and .net robots - and few humans) - but “hi!” too to my plucky following from the Czech Republic and Israel (assuming, that is, that it isn’t the secret services in both nations still keeping an eye on me - let it go guys, it was a long time ago!). Bonjour to our French friends, hola! to the Spanish and ciao! to our Italian visitors (big fan of Florence, love what you guys have done to that place!).

A big shout out to Moldova, Poland and Switzerland. G’day and kia ora to our anitpodean friends in Australia and New Zealand (do Kiwis ever really say kia ora?). A hearty hello to our German, Dutch, Swedish, Austrian and Canadian contingents. And, to the happy few from Brazil, Japan, Latvia, South Africa, Norway, China (really?), Finland, Taiwan (that’ll put pay to the Chinese visits), Lithuania and Mexico, welcome.

Since the beginning of the year I’ve also had single hits from Bulgaria (I’m a big fan of Potev Plovdiv FC!), Andorra, Egypt, Greece, Croatia, India, Morocco, Malaysia, Russia and the Slovak Republic (it seems I’m much more popular in the Czech bit of the old Czechoslovakia, I wonder why?)

We even have occasional callers from Argentina, Thailand (love your food) and my favourite country in the world - Costa Rica (honestly, I know I’ve never been - but you should study the history of the place - the most liberal nation in Central America - a fantastic history of social reform, no standing military, the highest literacy rates in the region, traditionally a peacemaker, a beacon for decent government and some of the most astonishingly benign dictators in history. If I was going to get appointed as the benevolent dictator of anywhere, it would be Costa Rica - that’s a country that’s got things sussed. Buy me a beer sometime and mention Costa Rica to me, I can go on for hours, it’s hilarious!)

I’ve no idea what brought these travellers to my door, nor what they made of it when they got here, but come on in, sit a while, would you like a cup of tea? A biscuit? Ah go on. You will now. Go on.

Now excuse me while I pop off and write some reviews…

It started off as a quick test to see what was possible and ended up with a whole new blog… seven hours later, it’s 5:30am and frankly I’m not sure I’ve got a particularly firm grip on reality.

Still the old grey design was getting me down.

Perviously, although I’ve used wordpress to power this blog it was an installation done by my ISP. This was the first time I’ve done an installation from the ground up (well, with some help from Pragya’s Redie template, which I’ve tweaked.

Wordpress is a pretty remarkable piece of software - just fiddling about with this made me realise there’s a hell of a lot a more dedicated programmer could make this thing do.

Anyway, I hope you like the new look - do let me know if you come across broken things.

Bed now. Football later. Reviews to write.

A new Friday Flash at last. This was written at the Friday Flash Fiction workshop at Eastercon and thus it is purely by coincidence (or perhaps the perversely complex machinations of my subconscious are more perversely complex than I had previously assumed) that this story is being published today - my birthday and the 26th anniversary of the events herein recalled:

THE SPITFIRE

The Spitfire was a sleek metal thing with a space for a battery underneath that made the propeller spin.I had coveted it for months as it had sat in the window of Morrow’s toy shop – the tiny moulded plastic pilot alert, day and night, for Messherschmidts and Focke Wolfs that would never pounce.

Now, possessing it at last, I admired the plane from every angle, holding it gently with the tips of my fingers. It was a Mark V, with beautiful curved wings and a shark like nose tipped with three propeller blades. Pressing a tiny, almost invisible, button on the bottom released the undercarriage, which descended slowly and locked into place with a satisfying click.

The letters EBZ were stencilled on the side of the plane with the RAF roundel on the side and wings, yellow, blue, white and red.

I brought it down to land gently on the kitchen table.

“Happy birthday,” my da said.

“Thanks – ” it was all I had time to say before my brother burst in.

“What d’ye want with this British bollocks,” he laughed, sweeping his hand across the table.

The Spitfire skittered away from me, rose briefly, its propeller turning free and for a moment it seemed set to take to the skies and fly. Then gravity gripped it, it turned over and plunged nose-down onto the hard-tiled floor.

The propeller shattered, plastic shards flashing across the floor. The canopy split like an egg-shell exposing the pilot to the elements. The tail was bent and twisted.

My brother stood hand over his mouth, shocked at what he’d done, his silly grin turning sick. I turned to my da, who bent to pick up the pieces of my toy.

The Spitfire never flew again.

Just back from Eastercon, which was a big, entertaining and (it felt to me) a hugely successful convention.

Personal Eastercon hightlights:

• Moderating a panel with Cory Doctorow, Amanda HemingwayigHi, China Mieville and Ruth O’Reilly on Politics in Young Adult Fiction – which I thought was a really interesting discussion.
• Managing to make space for Cory, Amanda and China to get their say, despite the determination of Ruth O’Reilly to dominate the conversation with her incessant ranting in the above panel*
  
• The ease with which it is possible to make Gemma – Neil Beynon’s much better half – blush.
  
• The look of terror on Charles Stross’s face when he realised Gemma (see above) was staring at him – again! **
  
• The FFF panel – small, but perfectly formed – and meeting all the guys
  
• The BSFA Awards - there was a great vote, a great turn-out for the presentation, a lot of love in the room and Flick’s beautifully made awards (origami rockets) were the most lustworthy things I saw all weekend
• Mitch Benn – much ruder, much funnier than I was expecting.
  
• Sex and the Singularity – the panel that will, forever, change the way I think about hippos
  
• Drunken conversations – you all know who you are.
  
• Sharing tables with writers like Paul Cornell, Cory Doctorow, China Mieville and Ian McDonald and not being able to detect the slightest whiff of ego – people talk about the openness of sf fandom and it’s easy to be dismissive, but you know it is true 99% of the times
  
• Ian Watson makes me laugh (in a good way)

And the not so highlights

• Introducing China Mieville and getting the name of his book, Un Lun Dun, wrong – twice.
• The corridors – my bad knee hurts.
• The bars – we’re going back to this hotel for Eastercon in 2010 – I hope by then they’ll be able to organise things so that it is possible to buy a round for a largish group of people that includes a variety of drinks (cider, lager, real ale) all in the one place with staff who show some (i) talent and (ii) interest in service.
• Being introduced to Aliette de Bodard (author of “Deer Flight” and “The Lost Xuyan Bride” in recent Interzones) and assuming she was Gareth Lyn Powell’s wife (it was late, I was getting drunk, I’m a bit of an idiot – she was French grace personified)

* This might not be true.

** Neither might this.

For those of you that might conceivably care, my Eastercon schedule has changed pretty dramatically over the last few days so, a revised list of where I’ll be:

Friday to Monday: near the bar

Except:

Friday 14:00 The Hovercraft of Disbelief

Friday 17:00 21st Century Classic Films

Saturday 15:00 Flash Fiction with the Friday Flash Fictioneers

Sunday 13:00 Politics in Young Adult Fiction

Sunday 16:00 The works of Arthur C Clarke

See you there…

As I’m sure most of the sf fans reading this blog will know, Arthur C Clarke died today. In one sense the death of a 90 year old man who’d not been well for a very long time shouldn’t come as a shock - and yet I’m surprised and saddened.

I guess like most sf readers my age Clarke’s science fiction was one of the first things I picked up when I was a kid and (along with Asimov and Heinlein) he played a big part in defining the boundaries I put around the term “science fiction”. The first things I remember reading were the collections Expedition to Earth and Nine Billion Names of God from my local library - both of which I read in a day and then immediately reread. Both books stand as proof that Sir Arthur could wrap enough ideas to power another writers whole career into one short story.

From there I remember the novels A Fall of Moondust, City and the Stars and Earthlight but it was Rendezvous with Rama that blew my head off. I don’t think anyone has ever achieved that “sense of wonder” thing quite so comprehensively or memorably. Rama, with Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (could two books be more different in style and tone) and Gibson’s Neuromancer stand as the triumvirate of sf novel that had a really powerful effect on me as a reader. Oddly I never stumbled across Childhood’s End as a young reader and it was only about six months ago that I finally got around to reading what, I guess, many people would consider Clarke’s masterpiece.

It’s a curious book - obviously very much of its time - but it encompasses perfectly the strength of Clarke’s writing - the ability to embrace the enormous scale of the universe and our tiny place within it without ever losing a grip on the moral imperative for us to behave as if our actions mattered. Clarke walked the middle ground between the distant coldness of Olaf Stapledon and too cozy Americans like Heinlein. I enjoyed it immensely - and having just read the shortlist for the 1958 BSFA Awards - I’m amazed how much better Clarke’s work has stood the test of time than many of his contemporaries - Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit Will Travel is five years younger but feels like it comes from a distant century in comparison to Childhood’s End.
Clarke’s work continues to have its influences. Obviously there are writers who are mining similar seams - authors like Baxter and Reynolds who possess the same ability to place humanity in fierce perspective against a galactic backdrop. But equally important is Sir Arthur’s humanism - a common thread in British SF woven through the works of Wells to Clarke and on to writers who probably see themselves as having reacted against the spaceships and futurism that Clarke embodied.

Over the coming days I’ve no doubt much will be made of Clarke’s futurism - most famously his “invention” of communication satellites and all that - but recently I’ve been thinking about the way Clarke seemed to have a clear grip on the idea of the “singularity” long before anyone else - has anyone summed up the idea of the singularity as efficiently as Clarke’s famous claim that any sufficiently advanced technology will look like magic. I was surprised how strongly the post-human theme was developed in Childhood’s End and how similar the concerns were.

Entirely by coincindence, last week I was listening to this programme on the BBC Radio 4 website. It’s a nice tribute to the man, he comes across as funny, modest and, of course, fearsomely clever, even as a very old and sick man. It also contains a fantastic exchange between Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov from 1974.

Clarke: “Ladies, gentlemen, and in the case of any robots or extraterrestrial’s present, gentlebeings, I’m not going to waste any time introducing Isaac Asimov, that would be as useless as introducing the equator – which, indeed, with the passing of time he is coming to resemble more and more closely. The rumour that there’s a certain rivalry between us should be put to rest once and for all in my recent book Report on Planet Three – for those of you not wise enough to have bought that small masterpiece the dedication reads as follows:

In accordance with the terms of the Clarke/Asimov treaty the second best
science writer dedicates this book to the second best science fiction writer.”

To which Asimov replied: “From here on in I won’t mention him at all, from here on in let us talk about science fiction which is after all what we both do. I because I am a great writer, and Arthur because he is a stubborn writer.”

As I say, I’m surprised at how sad this news has made me feel. The world is a stupider and slightly less exciting place today. My thought are with Arthur’s friends and family, especially his brother - an exceptionally nice man.

ISBN 978-0-9558662-0-3

ILLUMINATIONS is a new anthology from small press Odd Two Out Publishing showcasing original, cutting edge short fiction from eight up-and-coming young British writers.

When British author Gareth L Powell started adding short weekly pieces of flash fiction to his website back in July 2007, he didn’t expect anyone else to take much notice.

But soon there were seven other writers doing likewise - Paul Graham Raven, Gareth D Jones, Martin McGrath, Dan Pawley, Justin Pickard, Neil Beynon, and Shaun C Green. Together, they have become known as the Friday Flash Fictioneers.

Flash fiction stories are complete short stories told in fewer than 1,000 words. Quoting from his introduction to the anthology, Gareth L Powell says:

“Adhering to this restricted format can be a valuable exercise for a writer. It’s often a lot trickier than it looks. You have to make every word count. Every thing in the story has to be doing something because there just isn’t room for extraneous waffle.”

The Friday Flash Fictioneers come from diverse walks of life – musicians, office workers, freelance journalists, students, magazine editors – and this new anthology collects together the best of their weekly output.

Edited by Paul Graham Raven, the pieces range from mainstream literature to far-out speculation; from horror to humour; from outright fantasy to straight-faced space opera.

All the stories in ILLUMINATIONS are published under a Creative Commons licence that permits them to be reproduced in the public domain as long as no profit is made in the process.

Copies of ILLUMINATIONS: The Flash Fiction Anthology will be available to order for £6.99 from Odd Two Out Publishing, or from the authors themselves.

All profits from the sale of ILLUMINATIONS will be donated to the NSPCC.

Alternatively, The Fictioneers will be running a flash fiction workshop as part of Orbital 2008, the British Science Fiction convention held at the Raddisson Hotel, Heathrow over the Easter weekend. Convention-goers are invited to come along to quiz the team and have a go at writing their own extremely short fiction.

{So this is mostly why things have been quiet around here for the last few weeks. The big secret is out! And I now have the seed of my own publishing empire. Much, much more than this in the days to come - for now, just buy a copy, ya cheapskate!}

I’m a big fan of archaeology programme Time Team - I’ve always been interested in history, especially ancient history (blame going to a grammar school for that) - and the history mixed with the deep, probably genetic, sympathy any Irishman possesses for those who earn their living digging ditches mean that archaeology has always interested me. I very nearly applied to study ancient history at university - it was a toss of the coin really between that and media/computing (which in 1987 wasn’t an obvious choice, I can tell you - I was ahead of the curve there), my inability to master any language other than the one I was born speaking was probably the deciding factor.

For quite a long time after I first got on the internet one of the places I hung out most often was the Time Team boards on Channel 4. This was before the “peace process” and the big changes in Northern Ireland and I used to bemoan the fact that Dungannon, my home town, had loads of fascinating history that had all been buried under British Army concrete never to be seen again.

Well, the Army have gone and last summer Time Team dug up that concrete and they broadcast the programme about it today.

And I found it very strange.

Because of the army base and the ”Troubles” I’ve never been to the top of the hill in Dungannon.

I know from living around the town that from the top of the hill you should be able to see for miles (east across Lough Neagh to Antrim  and, I’m told, as far as Louth on a sunny day - we get those about twice a decade! - they say you can see seven counties Derry, Fermanagh, Armagh, Antrim, maybe a bit of Down, Cavan and Louth? The Sperrins probably block the view to the West ). I’ve wondered what you could see ever since I was a boy.

And, today, there it was on TV.

And it looked beautiful, to me.

(Okay the scaffolding on the Church of Ireland church isn’t great - trust the Prods to ruin things! )

That’s not something you can normally say about Dungannon, which for all its many joys is a jumbled together town with the older buildings all built out of a gritty, dark stone that seems to possess the ability to suck joy from the air (especially when wet).

Part of me felt sad and part of me felt absurdly angry too. There’s no point getting angry at the fact that history, circumstance and the British Army had combined to deny me something so simple. Something that the inhabitants of most other towns in the world would have taken for granted. But there you go. Anger it was.

Mine wasn’t the first generation not to see the view from the top of the hill - I don’t suppose the whatever there names where who owned the land between Chichester chasing the O’Neills out and the arrival of the Ranfurlys - were that keen on sharing their view with the hoi-polloi. For that matter I don’t suppose the O’Neills were inviting the sweaty masses up to share their view either.

The programme said the council were looking to turn the site into a park, so maybe one day soon I’ll get up there.

Iron Man… new trailer… things go boom! Martin go gaga!

http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/02/28/another-full-iron-man-trailer-launches-holy-sht/

ps I know things are quiet around here just at the moment, but bear with me BIG announcements soon, I hope.