Richard K. Morgan's Blog, page 5

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The Trouble with Twitter 2: 2020 Vision.

Oops, I did it again…….

Downstream of the dumpster fire that’s blown up around my support for J K Rowling’s tweet in support of Maya Forstater, I have once again been banned from Twitter, and this time it looks serious. (For those not in the know, google those two names together and you should come away up to speed). In essence, I gave notice that I would not tolerate anybody using the slur TERF on my timeline, and that anyone who insisted would be blocked. Cue a long line of angry Trans...

The Trouble With Twitter

In case anyone’s found their way here from my Twitter feed, and wonders why there’s been some radio silence at that end, the answer is simple – I’ve had my account suspended, have appealed and am waiting on re-instatement. I have no idea how long the appeal process habitually takes, or indeed how long this one will last. In the event that the appeal is rejected, who knows, it may last forever, since I have no intention of backing down from what was a thoroughly fit-for-purpose piece of vitrio...

Receding Tide

Quick update on the state of the Great Clearance Sale – we are down to a very limited amount of stock remaining, and I can actually see most of my office floor now, so I’ll be wrapping the sale up shortly. Last chance to buy, if anyone missed the fireworks earlier.

Gone –

All my SF titles, apart from some last few US paperback editions of Altered Carbon with the Netflix tie-in cover.

Remaining –

Decent numbers of The Steel Remains, The Cold Commands and The Dark Defiles, in a variety of dif...

Boxed In, Selling Out

Right then – as previously mentioned on my Twitter feed (You don’t do Twitter? How do you live???), it’s That Time again.

Which is to say it’s the time when I once again run out of feasible storage for my author copies and have to send them on to owners who can care for them better than I – i.e. put them on a shelf in a heated room with air and light, instead of imprisoning them in brutal tightly packed cardboard cells in a cold and unlovely concrete floored outbuilding without possibility...

Thin Air, Deep Dive

This is an interview  I did for Professor Sara Martin Alegre from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona a couple of months back, due to be published later this year in the spec-fic critical journal Helice. Sara has been a constant promoter of my work in academic circles for some years now, and her questions always involve something of a deep dive; they force me to think as hard about my work as I ever have at any previous point, including during its conception. That’s a sobering but also ver...

Fragments of a Jet-lagged Dream

Eight hours of jet-lag will do strange and spectral things to you – it’s not enough to wipe you out, but it haunts you just the same. You’ll find yourself, for example, wandering amidst late afternoon crowds but feeling like a man adrift in a city full of ghosts. Or perhaps, judging by the general sense of disconnect in your head, you’re the ghost around here and everyone else is just getting on with their lives. In either case, you don’t quite trust this bright winter sky overhead or the bus...

All Philosophical n Shit

As if being mobbed with affection and accolades at Eurocon last week wasn’t enough, my ego received another unhealthy boost when the nice people at The Institute of Art and Ideas asked me to provide a link to this video of me being a malcontent smartarse. (Not to mention a Far Cry – Primal fan.)  Apparently it’s been very popular……..

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Read and Recommended

 

A Brief History of Seven Killings – Marlon James

Bought as a gift to my wife – who was a big fan of James’ The Book of Night Women – then snaffled from her when I had to go away on a trip, this ends up being one of my favourite books of recent years.  The first handful of pages stake out the territory in no uncertain terms – brutal, lyrical, fantastical and utterly fresh.  Oddly enough, my first point of comparison was the Australian thriller Two Hands, because it has the same juxtaposition...

Gratuities at your Discretion

If there’s one enduring and consistent criticism of my work that stands above all others, it is the complaint that I write gratuitous sex scenes.  (A long way behind that comes the occasional whinge about gratuitous violence too, but really, it’s the sex that seems to be upsetting people).

My response to this over the last decade and a half as a published author has been complicated and evolutionary in nature.  Right back at the beginning, so near as I can now recall, I think I felt a tiny bi...