Ken MacLeod's comments.
The title comes from two quotes:
“If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god.”—Graydon Saunders
Contact: ken at libertaria dot demon dot co dot uk. Blog-related emails may be quoted unless you ask otherwise.
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An observation
Several times in the dark ages before I knew about Heavens-Above and @VirtualAstro and the like I spotted what I thought was the ISS but was actually an Iridium flare.
Which is why, in at least two published books, I've described the ISS as going from south to north or vice versa, and as flaring and fading ...
Labels: amazing things, skiffy, writing
What I've been doing
Any other write-for-hire projects gratefully considered, by the way.
Meanwhile, here's a bit of catch-up, working backwards.
This morning a photographer from the Scotsman group of newspapers called to take a photo of me for an interview that Stuart Kelly conducted last week, soon to be published in (I think) Scotland on Sunday, in conjunction with the publication of Intrusion. The photography was done in a nearby park, in high winds.
Shortly before the photographer arrived I replied as follows to an email asking me to endorse the Open Justice Project:
On a cheerier note, there's this (via), a highlight of the third SFX Weekender, which I attended as a guest at the beginning of the month.
While I agree (with some reservations) that it's a worthwhile project, I don't have time to write anything for it, and I don't want to endorse it because
(a) I know next to nothing about the issue
(b) the little I do know is that court reporting is fraught with peril even for trained professional reporters, and I don't want to encourage members of the public to run these risks
(c) the decline of professional court reporting is the real problem, which makes this something of a diversion
(d) whenever I 'endorse' a campaign something toe-curlingly embarrassing happens, the latest being this, in which I and other writers are described as 'launching' and 'spearheading' a campaign which was in fact launched by local trade unionists and organised by, among others, the hard-working activist Pete Cannell, and about which we merely said - at Pete's request - a few words in support. So now it must seem to those actually doing the work that we're trying to take credit for it.
I could go on, but let's leave it there.
Just when you thought Neil Gaiman couldn't be more of a legend.
The event was a new one on me, a sort of mash-up of what I think of as an SF convention (i.e one organised by SF fandom, and in which any writers and artists present - other than Guests of Honour - are very much on a level with the fans) and what I think of as a media convention (i.e. a convention where the professionals - actors, usually - are the stars, and everyone else is audience). Each has their place, and putting elements of both together in a holiday camp in Wales in February shouldn't work, but in some alchemical way it did. The fandom demographic (you know who you are) extends way beyond the people you meet at SF conventions - as witnessed, come to think of it, by the commercial success of SFX, a magazine which to its credit has always maintained an informed coverage of written SF, which chugs along like a grimy old space-tug in the gigantic fleet of other-media SF/F.
I had a good time, but to describe the weekend would be to go over ground already well covered (sometimes critically) by, among others: the Orbit team (to whom thanks); Niall Harrison; Al Reynolds; Paul McAuley; Sophia McDougall; Ro Smith; and Sam Stone (who says very kind things about me).
On a likewise cheery note, two of my short stories from last year are on the 2011 Locus Recommended Reading list.
Labels: self-promotion, skiffy, writing
Fresh Paint
The post below reminds me that I've promised to review Tim Maughan's collection Paintwork, each of whose three stories takes the idea of city environments overlayed with locally-experienced virtual reality - augmented reality - a step or two into the future. They've already been widely and enthusiastically reviewed, and rather than rehash the storylines I'll just flat out recommend them - at a couple of quid for the ebook, it's not much of a risk to check out, and well worth it - and remark on what I think makes them distinctive, which is this.
The cyberpunk vision of the future has been around for a quarter of a century - more than long enough to become default. You can handwave it, you can buy one off the jpeg. And like the shiny and trekky and trippy futures that preceded it, it's become in itself an overlay, a mirrorshade between us and the emergent future in the present that cyberpunk once forced our attention on.
Tim Maughan is, in these stories, doing with now what the original cyberpunks did with then. I hope he does a lot more of it.
City of Lit does city of light
I'm very pleased to be a small part of the Edinburgh City of Literature Trust's imaginative project, enLIGHTen, celebrating the Scottish Enlightenment with light and sound. My contribution is a flash fiction inspired by a quote from Adam Smith:
‘Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition’The quote will be projected near the Royal Society building in George Street, with my story as an accompanying audio download.
To tell you the truth, though, the story was just as much inspired by the nearby statue of James Clerk Maxwell, which shows the great man apparently contemplating a CD. No spoilers, but if I say 'post-singularity', seasoned SF readers will be able to take it from there.
Labels: amazing things, coming attractions, local, self-promotion, writing
Coming soon: US paperback of The Night Sessions
Via i09, I see that the forthcoming Pyr edition of The Night Sessions is now available for pre-order. The cover, by Stephan Martiniere, is just ace - I've seen it before, of course, as editor Lou Anders took me through various stages of the design process, but this happens to be the first time I've seen it walking the mean streets by itself.
The book itself is a near-future police procedural, featuring atheist detectives, presbyterian terrorists, creationist science-park animatronic hominids, a gothic lolita secret policeman, and Calvinist robots in space.
Or, as the publisher more soberly puts it:
A bishop is dead. As Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson picks through the rubble of the tiny church, he discovers that it was deliberately bombed. That it’s a terrorist act is soon beyond doubt. It’s been a long time since anyone saw anything like this. Terrorism is history.
After the Middle East wars and the rising sea levels, after Armageddon and the Flood, came the Great Rejection. The first Enlightenment separated church from state. The Second Enlightenment has separated religion from politics. In this enlightened age there’s no persecution, but the millions who still believe and worship are a marginal and mistrusted minority. Now someone is killing them.
At first, suspicion falls on atheists more militant than the secular authorities. But when the target list expands to include the godless, it becomes evident that something very old has risen from the ashes. Old and very, very dangerous. . .
Labels: coming attractions, self-promotion, skiffy, writing
Known manifestations
Thursday 2 to Sunday 5 February: with many other authors, as well as noted SF/F fans and artists at SFX Weekender 3, Pontin's Holiday Park, Prestatyn Sands, North Wales. It's hoped (but not promised) that pre-publication copies of my new novel, Intrusion (Orbit, 1 March 2012), will be available for signing in the dealers' room.
Intrusion is, of course, already available for pre-order in hardcover and Kindle editions. Cory Doctorow, who has kindly allowed me to quote from his forthcoming review, describes it as a new kind of dystopian novel: a vision of a near future "benevolent dictatorship" run by Tony Blair-style technocrats who believe freedom isn't the right to choose, it's the right to have the government decide what you would choose, if only you knew what they knew. ... a haunting, gripping story of resistance, terror, and an all-consuming state that commits its atrocities with the best of intentions.Iain M. Banks calls it a twistedly clever, frighteningly plausible dystopian glimpse.
Friday 13 April, evening: a panel on transhumanism/posthumanism with, among others, Justina Robson and Steve Fuller at the Edinburgh International Science Festival.
Saturday 14 (evening) to Sunday 15 April: Guest of Honour at the lively and highly commendable annual 'fantastic weekend for readers and writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror', now in its sixth year, Alt.Fiction, Phoenix Digital Arts Centre, Leicester.
Labels: coming attractions, self-promotion, writing
2012 - year of fell portent
My brain, at the moment, would welcome being devoured by a feather-coated obsidian-toothed deity with a name that reads like it came from a Polish dictionary falling downstairs, but the grisly repast would probably send said deity on a hasty visit to the privy, so I'll just have to sweat this one out.
Happy New Year!