Tobias S. Buckell's Blog, page 42

Hurricane Fever turned in, short stories in progress

The blog went almost dark for three weeks there, which is what happens when I’m deep under deadlines. The amount of work I slogged through was daunting, and in fact I’m still a bit dazed. In addition to getting Hurricane Fever drafted I ended up working on a sudden opportunity, there’s been a lot going on behind the scenes here, and all of this is after a long trip back from being overseas for World Fantasy Con and other things.

It’s been a few months of pushing my personal envelope, but now I...

THE BOOK OF SILVERBERG, which will have a story of mine in it, taking pre-orders

I’ll actually have a story in this! Silverberg had a big impact on me in high school because his book The Secret Sharers: Vol 1 was the first book I found with notes about editing in the story intro, which helped me (without access to how to write books) start figuring out how to draft.

“In The Book of Silverberg, editors Gardner Dozois and William Schafer have assembled a tribute anthology fully worthy of the Master himself. The book begins with a pair of affectionate appreciations from Greg...

Confusion is an awesome con in Detroit. I’m going, you should too: here’s my schedule

Hey, this January I’ll be at Confusion, a science fiction convention just up the road from me in Detroit, MI (as duly noted on my appearances schedule). Hey, January in Detroit, you’re thinking? Yeah. But you know what, Confusion is such a cool gathering of the science fiction tribe, including so many writer friends near and dear to me, I can’t imagine being anywhere else. True facts.

I just got my schedule, as I’ve agreed to do some panels, my comments in brackets:

The worst thing I ever tried...

Icelandair and Aeros team up for Arctic blimps!

As Paul Weimer noted, because of writing Arctic Rising, anytime anything blimp and Arctic related pop up I get notice, which is pretty cool (in my book). Howard Taylor just forwarded this to me:

“U.S.-based airship company Aeros and Icelandic airline Icelandair Cargo, say they have signed an agreement with hopes of establishing a partnership to develop new air freight service across the Arctic region.

Together they are hoping to deliver standard cargo containers via Iceland to regions with litt...

Japan wants to help build a maglev line on the East Coast, and is offering to help pay

Japan offers to foot a good portion of a maglev train line (speeds over 300mph) on the East Coast. Holy shit people, do this already!

“To build the proposed American line, Japan has come up with a method of financing that is similarly novel. In a meeting with President Obama last winter, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered to provide the maglev guideway and propulsion system at no cost for the first portion of the line, linking Washington and Baltimore.

‘We are going to share this technology with...

AEP files plan saying only solar and wind from now on for new electricity generation

Wow. An interesting sign of a rapidly changing utilities market:

“On Nov. 1, AEP, one of the other five biggest coal-fired electric utilities, filed a plan to Indiana and Michigan regulators saying that the only new generating capacity it would need over the next decade would be wind and, starting in 2020, solar. The company said it ‘expects that utility-scale solar resources will become economically justifiable by 2020.’”

(Via Tennessee Valley Authority to close 8 coal-fired power plants – The...

Click to see UK and US covers for Hurricane Fever, due out July 2014

The follow up book to Arctic Rising, Hurricane Fever will launch in the US and UK markets in July 2014. I’m working on edits right now, which is why there is very little blogging going on: I’m deep in the freelance and fiction mines here.

So, more info about the book. Here’s the UK cover:

UK cover copy:

When a freelance spy is yanked out of comfortable retirement aboard his boat following the death of a friend, he stumbles upon a deadly terrorist plot to use a private space delivery platform in...

Interview at Virginia Quarterly: link, plus a quick clarification of awkward phrasing on my part

Guy Gonzalez interviewed me over at the Virginia Quarterly about being a dad and a writer. One of the reasons I was psyched to do the interview is that almost no one has ever asked me as a dad how I juggled parenting and writing, but almost every married women writer friend of mine has been asked. The assumption is interesting, but I think dads are worth asking about parenting as well. And I’m proud to be a dad, so it was something really new to talk about (we should either assume it effects...

Interesting article on Libya: 2 years in

Hmmm…

“Yet in spite of this, for motives that vary widely, Western views of post-Gaddafi Libya range from disinterest to disaster. This despite the fact that Libya, as divided by historical grievance and tribal manipulations as any artificially drawn former European colony, has held together a good deal better than the supposedly more mature Arab societies of Egypt and Syria to the east.

So as you read the hand-wringing diatribes about ‘Libya on the brink’ in this anniversary week, keep things...

Hurricane Fever: Deep in revisions

I’m deep into the revisions of Hurricane Fever (due out in July ’14), and it’s most likely that I’m going to be scattered, somewhat unresponsive, and so forth. So if I’m late in responding to email, or quiet on social media (with sudden bursts of activity during downtime) please understand: it’s not you, it’s totally me.