The SFX Summer of SF Reading
Stephen Hunt Adam Roberts, Dan Abnett Graham McNeill, China Mieville Michael Cobley

WATERSTONE'S PICCADILLY
Monday, 10 May 2010, 5:30PM
To celebrate the launch of The SFX Summer of SF Reading we are delighted to host authors from the across the [sic] SF spectrum. Access to the queue is on a first come first served basis, please arrive early to avoid disappointment. The duration of signing is discretionary. To win tickets to an exclusive post signing event please goto http://www.futurecomps.co.uk/sfxevening.

Further details: 020 7851 2400

Forbidden Planet and Gollancz publishing are delighted to bring you one of our now-celebrated, open-format, multi-author signings! At 6pm on Thursday May 13th, Forbidden Planet 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London will be playing host to: -

• Stephen Deas
• M D Lachlan
• John Meaney
• Sarah Pinborough
• Adam Roberts

This is a free-form and open signing, bringing the authors out from behind their tables and giving their readers a chance to meet them and talk to them about their work. An array of fantastic books will be on hand to be picked up and signed – including works by every one of the writers present.

Come!

There have been some other reviews. I was particularly pleased with this David Hebblethwaite review:

I can safely say that New Model Army is like no other book I’ve ever read. I know this because I have no name for the feeling I was left with after I’d finished it. That’s a recommendation, by the way.

That's exactly what I'm trying to do when I write fiction!

London Evening Standard. The best books of the year: our reviewers name the titles that have meant the most to them over the past 12 months.

FRANCIS SPUFFORD I spent this year finishing a book set in Russia, so I was all ready to delight in the charcoal-black satire of Adam Roberts's Soviet UFO novel Yellow Blue Tibia (Gollancz, £12.95), even before it was tipped as a worthier winner of the Booker than anything on the actual shortlist.

May I not sound too Boraty as I say, in reply: 'nice!'. In other news, and also floated first on Twitter, this:

FORBIDDEN PLANET and Gollancz Publishing are delighted to be hosting an open-format, multi-author signing. Five authors, one event – at 6pm on Thursday November 26th, Forbidden Planet 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London will be playing host to: -

• David Devereux
• Paul McAuley
• Justina Robson
• Adam Roberts
• Chris Wooding

To promote the release of Justina’s new book CHASING THE DRAGON, Forbidden Planet and Gollancz Publishing have gathered a host of science fiction and fantasy talent into one event – an event to bring writers and fans together and to promote interest in new and different kinds of fiction.

This is a free-form and open signing, bringing the authors out from behind their tables and giving their readers a chance to meet them and talk to them about their work. An array of fantastic books will be on hand to be picked up and signed – including works by every one of the writers present.

And, as usual with these events, there are likely to be more than a few surprise guests...

...and a subsequent visit to the pub!

Be nice to see you there. Whomsoever 'you' may be.

This has nothing to do with providing myself with work-avoidance fodder, although I have just spent a minute coming up with the following faux-etymology. Twitter. v & n From Latin, tuito 'a taking care of, keeping, guarding, preserving, defense, protection, preservation.'

It was a thoroughly stimulating experience, for me at any rate. The main theme of my thread of the teaching was the relative merits of broadly structuralist/formalis approaches to SFF (such as are, at the moment, probably dominant in the critical culture associated with genre) and the approaches we might call, again broadly, 'poststructuralist'. A very bright class, and lots of interesting interaction.

On the last day we picked a text we had all read -- The Hobbit, it turned out to be -- and discussed how we might write a paper about it. We discussed a wide range of possible angles; and after we'd noted the preponderance of holes in the novel, we talked about that. Rejecting (rightly, I think) a vulgar Freudian decoding ('all the holes are vaginas! And there are swords, too! The swords are penises!') we instead tried out a Deleuze/Guattari 'holey space' reading. After the class I wrote up the paper, and you'll find it here.

[Update: the event went off very well; thanks to Fran for organising it, and everyone who came]

Interesting fact: the event was at the Augustine United Church, on George IV Bridge. Ken Macleod was in the audience, and chatting to him afterwards I discovered that this very church appears in The Night Sessions, as the location for the silent club. So now you know.

Other news: I'll be appearing at the Paris Book Fair, hanging around the booth of the formidable Bragelonne, 15th-16th March, an eventuality occasioned by the imminent appearance of the French translation of Gradisil. I'll also poke my nose in at Orbital Eastercon, just on the Saturday. I may even be on some panels.