The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks (Orbit)
Any Day Now, Terry Bisson (Overlook)
Existence, David Brin (Tor)
The Rapture of the Nerds, Cory Doctorow & Charles Stross (Tor)
Empty Space, M. John Harrison (Gollancz; Night Shade ’13)
Intrusion, Ken MacLeod (Orbit)
Railsea, China Miéville (Del Rey)
The Fractal Prince, Hannu Rajaniemi (Gollancz; Tor)
Blue Remembered Earth, Alastair Reynolds (Ace)
Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer, Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
Slow Apocalypse, John Varley (Ace)
Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson (Grove Press)

The award, for best SF novel, will be presented during the Campbell Conference, to be held July 13-16, 2013 at the Oread Hotel in Lawrence KS.

I wish I could go, but on the 14th I'm giving a TEDx talk at the Houses of Parliament. Still; to be on the same list as Empty Space, Intrusion, The Fractal Prince, Blue Remembered Earth, 2312, Alif the Unseen and the rest is enormously flattering, and an honour.

That book to which the Robots version of Adam contributed a story? It's The Lowest Heaven, edited by Jared 'The Man' Shurin and Anne 'The Woman' Perry; it'll be launched June 13th and the Royal Observatory are taking pre-orders now. Oh, it's a good collection. It's a very very good collection.

Anne Perry's middle name isn't actually 'The Woman', by the way. It's 'C.' Just to clear that up.

In an interview with PW, Roberts says that he set out to write a new kind of whodunit, where the murderer’s name is revealed on page one yet is still a surprise to the reader at the end. He succeeds admirably with this three-part SF mystery, which just won the BSFA Award. Its eponymous antihero has various escapades while keeping dangerous technological secrets from falling into the wrong hands.

From the latest SFX.

Saturday, 15th June, Wolverhampton. Make a note of the date.

Details here:

"FUTURA presents a convention day on Saturday 15th June crammed full of science-fiction, including panels, readings, kafeeklatsches and much more on the day. Futura brings together a host of science-fiction authors and publishers for a day loaded with panels, readings, signings, booksales and much more. We will also be having an all day Real Ale bar."

Tickets are £25 available from our box office, or via wegottickets.com

FUTURA offers something for all SF fans, writers and readers.

GUESTS OF HONOUR include Ian R MacLeod,Ken MacLeod and Adam Roberts, plus sessions with an impressive range of speakers:
Tony Ballantyne
Sarah Cawkwell
Mike Chinn
Theresa Derwin
Jay Eales
Janet Edwards
Andrew Hook
Kim Lakin-Smith
Selina Lock
Philip Palmer
Stephen Palmer
Adele Wearing
Ian Whates

DARK SOCIETIES PANEL: WATERSTONES, PICCADILLY

the Post-apocalyptic Book Club and Waterstones Piccadilly are hosting a discussion event, on Thursday 2nd May at 7pm, which will delve into the murky depths of dystopia, its impact on Sci-Fi literature and what the awards mean to genre fiction.

The speakers are:

Tom Hunter – Award Director of The Arthur C Clarke Award for Science Fiction Literature.

Robert Grant – Author of Writing The Science Fiction Film, Literary Editor for SCI-FI-LONDON and one of the jury for this years The Arthur C Clarke Award.

Anne Perry – Assistant Editor at Hodder & Stoughton, co-editor of Pornokitsch and co-founder of The Kitschies Awards.

Adam Roberts - er, me.

Frances Hardinge - British author best known for her novel 'Fly By Night' which in 2006 won the Branford Boase Award. Her 2012 novel A Face Like Glass was nominated and short listed for a Kitschie.

Jeff Norton - Canadian author, writer-director, and founder of creative incubator Awesome. Jeff is best known for the best-selling Metawars series, and MetaWars 3.0: Battle of the Immortal is released the day of the panel!

The panel will take place on Thursday 2nd May 2013 at 7.00pm at Waterstones, Piccadilly. Tickets are just £5.00/£3.00 Waterstones Card holders and you can by either emailing events@piccadilly.waterstones.co.uk or telephoning 020 7851 2400.

Spaces will be limited so book early to avoid disappointment.

Speculative Fiction was released last Thursday (25 April); You can find it in the US for $11.99 and in the UK for £8.99. In addition to my piece on Ayn Rand, it has a wealth of brilliant articles and critical readings. Proceeds from all sales go to Room to Read. So -- c'mon! What's keeping you?

The editors say: "the Kindle version created by the Amazon computers wasn't up to snuff, so we're having it rebuilt by a human. It will will shortly, and should be on sale by 2 May".

More details here.

My contributor copy of this handsome volume, edited by Jonathan Strahan, came through the post today. Some excellent stories therein, but also my own 'What Did Tessimond Tell You?' Actually I'm pretty proud of this tale: formally traditional, but with some (I think) nice touches. It first appeared in Ian Whates' Solaris 1.2.

If it were possible, I'd like to publish 'What Did Tessimond Tell You?' in a forking, dual format. It's a story divided (traditional Shakespearian structure, see) into five parts. In the fifth part you the reader discovers the answer to the question posed by the tale's title. But I'm not sure that the story doesn't work better if you stop reading at the end of part 4. So: my ideal format would lay these facts before the reader and ask her to choose: do you want to read 1-4, or all 5? Then the e-book would lock you into your choice. Strahan's conventional book doesn't give you that option -- but that's not to say you shouldn't buy a copy. You so should!

Here is the Nightshade Books website page for the vol, with purchase links for North Americans. Here's an amazon.co.uk link for Brits -- best I can do.

More tomorrow!

NEWS!

1. I won my first ever award! Jack Glass won the BSFA Best Novel award, which thrilled me more than I can easily say. The shortlist was bruisingly good, and I was genuinely pleased to be nominated in an of-course-I'll-never-win sort of way; so the news bowled me over. Blacksheep won the Best Artwork award for the cover to Jack Glass, which, though I can take no personal credit for it, also pleased me mightily.

2. New Genre Army happened, at the University of Lincoln. I went, and it was most excellent. Really -- I had a marvellous time; Christos Callow and Caroline Edwards deserve All The Kudos In The World. (This was the event I mentioned on this very website, here). Glyphi are publishing the papers in a volume of Critical Essays, it seems. Hurrah.

More news tomorrow.

This event aims to bring together scholars, critics, writers and fans for the first academic conference dedicated to the literature and ideas of Adam Roberts. Papers are welcome on any topic related to Roberts’ writing from academics, researchers, fans, and anyone else interested. Topics might include, but are not limited to: -‘High-Concept SF’ and the Novel of Ideas

-Writing science fiction in the 21st Century: responsibilities and challenges
-Military SF, Political SF, Philosophical SF
-Britishness / British humour, sarcasm, style
-Utopia and Dystopia
-Unreliable Narrators
-Heroes and Antiheroes
-Postmodernism: Metafiction and Intertextuality
-Writing under nicknames: alternative writer identities
-Propaganda, Deception, Conspiracy Theories
-‘Practicing what you preach’: writing fiction with an academic background
-The role of technology
-Cynicism and Satire
-Depictions of Britain
-Dictators, Mass-Murderers, Criminals
-Crime Fiction in Science Fiction, Genre within Genre, and beyond Genre
-Space Colonization and Galactic Empires
-Pop Culture and Parody
-Alternative History
-Power

The conference welcomes proposals for individual papers and panels from any discipline and theoretical perspective. Please send a title and 300-500 word abstract for a 20 minute paper along with your name, affiliation and 100 word professional biography to newgenrearmy@gmail.com by 15th February 2013.

The conference is organised by Christos Callow, PhD candidate, Department of English, University of Lincoln and Dr Caroline Edwards, Lecturer in English, Department of English, University of Lincoln. The conference is sponsored by Gylphi: Arts and Humanities Publisher and the English Department of the University of Lincoln.

New Genre Army: An International Conference on the Writing of Adam Roberts

Friday 5th April 2013, Department of English, University of Lincoln

Sponsored by Gylphi: Arts and Humanities Publisher and the University of Lincoln. Part of the Gylphi Contemporary Writers series

Keynote Speakers: Professor Farah Mendlesohn (Anglia Ruskin University) Dr. Andrew M. Butler (Canterbury Christ Church University)

Response and Q&A from Adam Roberts

For more information or to respond to the call please contact:

Christos Callow
University of Lincoln

http://ulincoln.academia.edu/ChristosCallow

Dr. Caroline Edwards
University of Lincoln

http://phone.online.lincoln.ac.uk/cedwards

Email: newgenrearmy@gmail.com

First, I am delighted and pleased and indeed stunnedelighted that Jack Glass has been shortlisted in the BSFA Award Best Novel category. The winners will be announced at EightSquared, the 2013 Eastercon, Cedar Court Hotel, Bradford this Easter; I'm genuinely sorry that I won't be able to be there to congratulate Mike Harrison in person, but Steve Baxter has kindly agreed to stand-in for me in the unlikely event that my novel etc etc.

Secondly: the same day I was staggerghasted to discover that Jack Glass has also been shortlisted for the Kitschies Red Tentacle. The winner of this will be announced on Tuesday, 26 February at the Free Word Centre, London; and I hope to be there.

This double honour has genuinely delighted me.

___

PS: On the subject of self-promotion versus awards-pimpage, this is what I tweeted a week or so back on the matter:

[1] re: awards pimpage, and to be clear: I have no problem with self-promotion, as anyone who follows my twitter feed will know.

[2] Self promotion is about making people aware of your books. Awards pimpage is something else: it's about trying to win yourself awards.

[3] The downside of self-promotion is that it may annoy people. The downside of awards pimpage is that it corrupts awards themselves ...

[4] ... turning them into prizes for Most Effective Self Promotion, rather than prizes for the best book. That hurts everybody.

I'm a bit stuck with this self-defeating Christopher-Tietjens-esque attitude that awards should be given to the best book/story/whatever, rather than to the Most Effective Self-Promoter. It's a hopeless struggle, I accept: but there you go.

Buy yours today! (Also available in superrobotic kindle format*).

[*'superrobotic' kindle is exactly the same as regular kindle. Value of short stories may go down as well as up. £6.99 in ebook format. Pirates will incur my displeasure.]

Sie können kaufen Sie dieses Buch für alle deutschsprachigen Freunde.

Ja.

Amazon have this down for release October 2013; don't know if that's right -- but I do know that (a) the cover is a beauty, m'hearties, and that (b) the book, when it emerges, will be adorned by a plethora of absolutely gorgeous illustrations by Mahendra Singh. Not the cricketer, no. The artist! Really -- if you don't know his Hunting of the Snark artwork then you're missing one of the great treats of the internet. That he is my friend doesn't, I think, disqualify me from insisting that he is one of the most distinctive, most evocative and simply best illustrators at work anywhere today. There's something about his combination of 19th-century precision-gravure and his surrealist or otherwise imaginatively-unfettered modernity of idiom that just knocks the top of my head off.

I'm really honoured that I've been able to collaborate with him on this project.

As for the story, well it's come a long way from this jumping-off-point, as the third of six possible Verne sequel/update/metatext/doojabs. The core idea is the same but the details have largely changed.

Appearing in an anthology of short stories alongside Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Hanif Kureishi and many others? Really? Why, it appears to be true.

And is it for sale? Yes: buy direct from the publishers at that last link, or from amazon here.

Snowbooks say this was published on the 1st Nov, but a little bird tells me the issue date has been moved to the 1st December. Soon, though! Also, the 'sixteen' tales you can see on the other end of that publisher's site link has been distilled down to a more focussed fifteen, as you can see above. Buy, or preorder, from amazon, or direct from the publishers. Or would you prefer it that your engines do NOT resurrect? That'd be harsh. Here's the TOC, since you ask so nicely:

'The Soul-Eaters of Raveloe' by Alison Littlewood
'A Journey To The Centre Of The Moon' by Alan K. Baker
'She-Who-Thinks-For-Herself' by Juliet E. McKenna
'The Great Steam Time Machine' by Brian Herbert & Bruce Taylor
'Silver Selene' by Philip Palmer
'White Fangoria' by Roland Moore
'The God Of All Machines' by Scott Harrison
'The Crime Of The Ancient Mariner' by Adam Roberts
'There Leviathan' by Jonathan Green
'The Island Of Peter Pandora' by Kim Lakin-Smith
'The Ghost Of Christmas Sideways' by Simon Bucher-Jones
'Talented Witches' by Paul Magrs
'Fairest Of Them All' by Cavan Scott
'Tidewrack Medusa' by Rachel E. Pollock
'Robin Hood And The Eater Of Worlds' by Jim Mortimore

Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden age SF, Jack Glass is another superlative performance from Roberts. Whatever games he plays with the genre, whatever questions he asks of the reader, Roberts never loses sight of the need to entertain. Imbued with humour, clever tricks and a language that sparkles, Jack Glass is a masterpiece of storytelling; rather than being the traditional whodunit, it is a ‘how and when’ he did it. There is currently an argument within genre fiction such as SF, Horror and Fantasy, that it is not ‘literary’. Well, I encourage any reviewers or readers of the genre to find otherwise, especially with this extraordinary novel and with Roberts work in general. Roberts is an SF powerhouse, and a force to be reckoned with in the genre.

'Best SF Group' indeed! In another part of the planet, the most excellent Miriam Burtsein, The Little Professor herself, has reviewed I Am Scrooge:

My first impulse was to describe Adam Roberts' I Am Scrooge: A Zombie Story for Christmas as a "charming concoction." Except that the book has multiple graphic incidents of various people having their faces chewed off by zombies, which I suspect most readers would not find charming. Impaled, blasted, and bludgeoned zombies are probably also low on most charm meters. And yet...despite the zombocalyptic goings-on, this novel's essentially lighthearted approach to its blood-and-guts (OK, brain-and-guts) subject matter is, well, charming.

I Am Pleased!

It appears I have an essay in this promising looking collection.

The other exciting reissue news is the original A.R.R.R.Roberts title, The Soddit, in this handsome new livery. In two sizes, no less! Two! Soddit and Sodditto.

... 'buy this book!'. Not really, of course, he's dead. But were he alive today Dickens would surely say: 'wait ... what strange realm is this? How are these carriages drawn through the streets sans horse? What keeps those speeding silver craft in the sky?' and so on. He probably wouldn't say anything about I Am Scrooge, now reissued for Christmas. That's not even the real Charles Dickens. It's a miniature plastic one. Look at his feet!

In other news, Sainsbury is selling "I Am Scrooge by Sir Adam Roberts". So you could buy that one as well.

I wrote a story about a trip to the moon, a lunar adventure, an encounter with strange aliens (all that). Then I bethought me of the good old days when my novels were called things like Salt, On, W and !. Now there was a naming convention! Accordingly I named my new novelette An account of a voyage from World to World again, by way of the Moon, 1726, in the Commission of Georgius Rex Primus, Monarch of Northern Europe and Lord of Selenic Territories, Defender of the Faith. Undertaken by Captain Wm. Chetwin aboard the Cometes Georgius. I think this might catch on, as a new novel-naming convention.

So, how've you been?

Yes, yes, it's been a while. I shall keep things more up to date around here from now on, I promise -- starting with this post about my latest novel Jack Glass. This is pure plug. Impure semi-plug and other posts to follow.

Anyway, this is the book with, by general opinion, the nicest cover of any of my novels (thank you, Blacksheep). More, according to the entirely disinterested opinion of, er, my wife, it's my best novel yet. You wouldn't want to call my wife a liar, now, would you? Less subjectively it is a mash-up Golden Age SF space opera and Golden Age whodunit. If you don't like those two things then you won't like this, but if you do like them, then ... who knows? Maybe my wife is right. Here's one reader's amazon.com opinion: from a certain N. O. Tasockpuppet: 'This is most excellent stuff, this triptych of "locked-room mysteries". Inspired by both the "Golden Age of Sci-Fi" and similarly classic whodunits, Adam Roberts has fashioned a Space Opera that satisfies both the imagination and the intellect.' See?

There have been a few published reviews as well, and I'll run briefly through them. To start with the less than enthusiastic: Saxon Bullock, at SFX, was lukewarm -- the review isn't online, I'm afraid, but in a nutshell it was: 'this is a book in three parts; it's good but the first part is exceptionally good so the whole thing doesn't really work, 3 stars out of 5'. Which is hard to argue with. The estimable Guy Haley, despite opening his review with one of the nicest things I've ever read about myself ('Roberts' books are truly difficult to rate, because there isn't anything else like them in the modern SF genre') overall blows as cool as he does hot about the novel. And the great Christopher Priest reviewed the book in The Guardian. It's a review that's difficult to excerpt, and, as you'll see if you click the link, manages to be both positive and rather puzzled and negative at the same time. I tend to the view that it's as close as Priest will come to a dithyrambic review of my writing, given the parameters of his Reviewer's Voice, and his mixed reaction to my writing more generally. But maybe I'm fooling myself.

Other reviews are more straightforwardly positive. Niall Alexander at Tor.com calls it 'magnificent' (' ... perfectly plotted, winningly worded, and as rewarding, despite everything, as anything you’re apt to read this year, this trifecta of golden age goodness is yet another example of Adam Roberts’ tremendous talents').

Paul di Filippo says nice things about my writing, and this novel, in a locusonline review; wondering as he goes why 'Roberts’s books slide under everyone’s radar, consumer and reviewer alike ... drastically ignored by peers (no Nebula nominations) and fans (no Hugo nominations). But why? His work is always elegantly written, thought-provoking, suspenseful, ingeniously speculative and deftly plotted. He knows the history of the field inside and out (having written a big critical history of our lineage). He honors mainstream fiction as well. I find his characters eminently lifelike, his tone droll and acerbic and yet not insensitive to common human passions. In short, he seems the very model of a modern SF writer.'

Harry Ritchie, at the Daily Mail, says: 'The ingenuity factor is impressive enough, but this is a novel that also manages to shift our sympathy towards the infamous culprit, as we discover not only who done it and how but why, for this is a mightily oppressive future where trillions are governed by a dictatorial elite and capitalism at its rawest. Startlingly clever - a maestro’s performance.'

Liviu Siciu, over at Fantasy Book Critic: '[To say] "it is an extraordinary novel" is quite the understatement. A top 10 novel of 2012 for me.'

The Material Witness blog wasn't sure what to say: 'It's been about a month since I raced through Jack Glass in the space of 24 hours, and the reason it's taken me this long to review it is that I simply haven't been able to figure out how to write about it. That has nothing to do with the writing of Adam Roberts, which is exquisite throughout - smart, witty and addictive - nor the brilliance of Jack Glass, which is a fascinating, compelling and challenging tale of personality, politics and socio-economics. I have enjoyed no novel more during 2012.'

John Clute has some spontaneous jactitations over at Strange Horizons. he breaks open the R S Thomas (that great poet), amongst other things.

And finally, the hugely perceptive and rather neglected critic Dan Hartland, despite making cruel aspersions about my male pattern baldness ('... and between you and me, my hair is thinning a bit ...'), says some very interesting things.

Ian Whates, that excellent man, has just sent this through; the cover-art for the forthcoming Solaris Rising 1.5, including a story from me. Runs, ahem, rings around most short-story-collections cover art.

13th International Conference
UTOPIAN STUDIES SOCIETY
Tarragona, 4th-7th July 2012

I'll be giving the opening keynote; very exciting. There's a wine reception afterwards!

That thing Keats said about a thing of beauty? It applies here.

This is the latest iteration of the cover for my forthcoming Collected Short Stories, which Gollancz are putting out next year. It is, in a nutshell, yet another blinder played by the genius people at Blacksheep. I'm very conscious how lucky I have been with my cover art, and each of the last few (all Blacksheep designs) have upped the bar. I didn't think it was possible to get any better than the cover for Jack Glass, but this comes close to topping it.

"The anthology will feature sixteen brand new stories from some of the most exciting names writing in genre fiction today, and will be Steampunk ‘reimaginings’ or ‘retellings’ of classic works of literary fiction. Below is a list of the authors contributing to the book, along with their chosen literary work. "Resurrection Engines: Sixteen Extraordinary Tales of Scientific Romance" will be published in hardback on June 30th, then released in paperback in time for Christmas!"

01 - Brian Herbert & Bruce Taylor (H.G. Wells)
02 - Lavie Tidhar (Alice in Wonderland)
03 - Adam Roberts (Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
04 - Philip Palmer (Wilkie Collins)
05 - Juliet E. McKenna (H. Rider Haggard)
06 – Jonathan Green (Moby Dick)
07 - Alan K. Baker (Journey to the Centre of the Earth)
08 – Roland Moore (White Fang)
09 - Scott Harrison (Jekyll & Hyde)
10 - Alison Littlewood (Silas Marner)
11 - Jim Mortimore (Robin Hood)
12 – Cavan Scott (Snow White)
13 – Kim Lakin-Smith (Peter Pan / The Island of Doctor Moreau)
14 – Paul Magrs (Wuthering Heights)
15 – Simon Bucher-Jones (A Christmas Carol)
16 – Rachel E. Pollock (Treasure Island)

Comes out on my birthday, which is nice.

A friend sent me the link to the latest Rossi & Rossi exhibition: some splendid, beautiful canvases by Heman Chong, a snip at £2300, including the Headless and Snow images, below. Speaking as an author: I'm flattered to be included in such company, and to have provoked such fine art.

The new Vector is out; and the obscure music-related pun in this post title, up there, is my way of indicating that I've an article in it: 'On Science Fiction Music', pp22-28. Worth the price of admission on its own, I'd say.

Fishbowltastic cover, I think, though of limited relevance to the actual story. Then there's Keith Brooke's anthology of original critical essays Strange Divisions and Alien Territories: the Sub-Genres of Science Fiction (Palgrave 2012), containing my essay on SF and Religion called 'Does God Need a Starship?'.

And finally, The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature (edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn). I contributed the 'Gothic and Horror Fiction' essay to that one:

So in sum: odd; strange; fantastic.

Click, as they say, to embiggen.

Cyber Circus by Kim Lakin-Smith (Newcon Press)
Embassytown by China Mieville (Macmillan)
The Islanders by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)
By Light Alone by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
Osama by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)

BSFA members and attendees at Eastercon can vote, the winners being announced at Olypmus 2012, this year's Eastercon. It's a tricky call deciding which of that list is best: I don't envy you having to make your decisions!

I'm appearing at the First Fictions event this weekend, at the University of Sussex -- Sunday 22nd Jan. It would be great to see you, if you're there, or thereabouts.

At 4pm I'll be interviewing the superb Elleke Boehmer, both a brilliant literary critic and postcolonial theorist, and an exceptional novelist.

Then, two hours later at 6pm, I'm talking about my most beloved subject, science fiction, sharing the stage with crime writer Andrew Pepper.

I have just finished By Light Alone by Adam Roberts. If you like political literary novels, if you like emotionally compelling stories, if you like science fiction, you will like this. Hell, if you like your words strung together in beautiful and profound sentences so that you reread them for the sheer joy of language, you will like this.

Then, for balance, an anonymous reader, reported by Michelle Howe:

I recommended BLA to a collegue who likes hard sf and political intrigue, so of course I thought he'd love it. He didn't, and now is telling everyone not to trust my recs or reviews.

Marmite-acious. Over on the Strange Horizons blog Niall Harrison, that tall man, has written a characteristically insightful and intelligent account of the novel, putting it in the wider context of plays novels what I write:

Adam Roberts novels, it seems to me today, often worry at questions of sincerity and insincerity -- or authenticity and inauthenticity... For someone often pegged as a quite cynical, sardonic commentator, Roberts' fiction concerns itself quite often with what you might call verities of "the human condition", as conventionally understood -- there are essays to be written about love in Adam Roberts novels, and war in Adam Roberts novels -- albeit rarely in conventional forms, indeed usually deliberately contrary or challenging: the emotional arcs in Swiftly most infamously, perhaps. And more significantly, science fiction as published today is a fundamentally sincere genre: earnest, even, both politically and stylistically. Because Adam Roberts novels are only ever sincere in backhanded ways, and frequently insincere in obvious ways, it's easy to see them as critiquing science fiction; and they usually are; but per Puchalsky they're usually doing more than that as well, I think.

Niall links to pieces by Rich Puchalsky and Paul Kincaid that I've mentioned before on this site, but he also links to an interesting essay by Lavie Tidhar about me qua problem, 'Shall I Tell You The Problem With Adam Roberts?'. The whole thing is thought-provoking, but Lavie's thesis is summed-up in his conclusion: 'He is both the Fool and Knave of science fiction.'

So there you go.

Here's something to take not of (erm, '... of which to take note') if you're interested in SF. The brilliant Jessica Langer's brilliant Science Fiction and Postcolonialism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) is now available. Three things you should do.

1. Buy a copy.

2. Check out io9.com tomorrow (Tuesday, around 10 AM North American time), who are running an except from the book.

3. Nominate Dr Langer for a best-related Hugo and/or best-related BSFA award, if you have that power.

That is all. (What's that? My 'buy a copy' link goes to a UK site? Oh, right. Here you go).

Luke Yexley is a talented individual presently doing an A-Level in design. As part of his coursework, and in consultation with me, he has designed a cover for a collection of my short stories. And here's the result -- very nice, I think. I'd suggest you click-to-embiggen the above brother-of-simon Jay Pegg, and decide for yourself. [I have signed a contract with Gollancz to issue a collection of short fiction, actually: should be out some time next year I think].

After three previous volumes (two of which contained stories by me) Solaris is rising again, thanks to the metaphorical yeast of Ian Whates, that excellent individual. My contribution this time is a story called 'Shall I Tell You The Trouble With Time Travel?' In this story, I tell you, the reader, the trouble with time travel.

[14 Nov: this just in from amazon.com, whose reader reviews are, as we all know, infallible: 'OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: I first read the Peter Hamilton story ... and the Adam Roberts story which features another crazy explanation of a sf trope, this time the paradoxes of time travel and has the expected superb prose and characters, while not much later I also read the Alastair Reynolds story which contained the author's trademark serious cosmological stuff interspersed with human interest that has made him the leading hard sf voice of our time ... In addition to the trio above, the stories by Eric Brown/Keith Brooke and Jaine Fenn respectively were also excellent ... great prose and characters added these two stories to the A++ top tier ones of the anthology. Overall I would say that Adam Roberts Shall I Tell You the Problem with Time Travel? is my favorite story of the anthology, but all of these five are stories that reminded me again why I love science fiction in the short form too!']

[17 Nov: A signing! A signing in Forbidden Planet, on Saturday 26th November at 1pm!]

[22nd Nov: My last update to this post ... I just saw the SFX review of this volume, sadly not online, which praised the whole thing, and praised my story in particular ('sublimely good ... worth the price of admission alone'). Which is nice.]

Event: Is Science Fiction the only true relevant literary genre today?
7 November 2011
New Scientist and the Waterstones Gower Street Lecture Series present, Is Science Fiction the only truly relevant literary genre today?

Simon Ings, author of Dead Water, will be chairing this panel discussion on the importance and relevance of science fiction as a literary genre in today's modern world.

The panel will include British sci-fi author and three-time nominee of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Adam Roberts, the director of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Tom Hunter and John Sutherland, Emeritus Professor of Modern English Literature at UCL and author of the new book Lives of the Novelists.

Tickets are £6 for New Scientist readers and £5 for students. To purchase your tickets visit: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2361210444/eorg.

Is Science Fiction the only truly relevant literary genre today?
Chaired by Simon Ings
Date: Monday 7th November 2011, 7pm
Location: UCL, London, WC1E 7JG