Keith Stevenson's Blog, page 4

The Lenticular – Production Diary April

There’s comes a point in any endeavour where you think you’ve taken on too much. I’m never going to get to the top of that mountain. I’m never going to pack the kitchen into the available boxes in time. I decided to finalise and publish 3 books in 18 months. I must have been mad!

But it feels like I’m past that point where the task just looked too great to finish. Book 1 is laid out and proofed, book 2 is ready for layout and book 3 is ready for final copyedit. This is the drudge work that au...

Children of Memory – Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In his Arthur C Clarke Award-winning novel, Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky began a millennia-spanning story of failed and not-so-failed terraforming projects and the manipulation and ‘uplift’ of a growing number of non-human species. The first novel in the series plotted the evolution of enhanced, intelligent (and massive) portiid spiders, on a planet originally slated for human colonisation, who battle an incoming ship of hu...

Creating the print book – Traitor’s Run

Deciding to do just about everything in the production process for The Lenticular means the months since January have been very busy.

Of course it all starts with the text, which my editor Nicola O’Shea has done a number of passes on at a structural level and which then received a final copy edit.

While that was happening, I completed work on a couple of internal illustrations for the endmatter.

Once I had the copyedited file, it was time to lay the book out in InDe...

Publication Log – January

Now that the print edition of Horizon is well and truly out in the world, my focus is turning to the main event, which will take up pretty much the rest of this year: preparation and launch of book 1 of The Lenticular Series – Traitor’s Run.

Book 1 is slated for publication on 1 October, but there’s a lot to do between now and then. Right now my editor, Nicola O’Shea, is copyediting the final draft of the manuscript. I’ll then be laying out a print and ebook version for proofing. These versio...

The Second Sleep – Robert Harris

The Second Sleep by Robert Harris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s impossible to talk about The Second Sleep without SPOILERS, so stop now if you intend to read the book.

All civilisations think they are invulnerable. History warns us none is.

1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artefacts – coins, fragments of glass, human bones – which the old parson used to collect. Did his ...

The Dispossessed – Ursula K Le Guin

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The cover blurb for The Dispossessed makes it sound like a thrilling exciting narrative, filled with tension and action:

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life—She...

The Pride of Chanur – CJ Cherryh

The Chanur Saga by C.J. Cherryh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m working my way through a re-read of this saga. First up: The Pride of Chanur.

The The Pride of Chanur is a first contact chase drama that’s told with breakneck pacing while also unfolding a complex and richly detailed piece of worldbuilding. In turn, the worldbuilding heightens our understanding of the stakes and tensions inherent in the action, and so it too propels the plot along.

Cherryh’s approach to worldbuilding in The Pride of Cha...

Termination Shock – Neal Stephenson

Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is the second time I’ve tried to read Termination Shock and given up. This time I managed to get past the interminable section on the queen trying to land a plane, splashed through the truly comic book alligator attack and crashed into the info-dumpy backstory of the guy who saved them.

I like Stephenson. I loved Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon and Seveneves (apart from the far future section) but I thought Fall: or Dodge in Hell had ...

Inhibitor Phase – Alastair Reynolds

3 stars

As one of Alastair Reynolds’s more sarcastic characters, such as Scorpio the Hyperpig – or Triumvir Ilia Volyova – might say, ‘you don’t read Alastair Reynolds for the breakneck, frenetic pacing.’ His dialogue also tends towards the wordy. But you do read Alastair Reynolds for the jaw-dropping concepts.

In the case of Inhibitor Phase, the title promises to bring some kind of significant event – or maybe even a denouement – to this cosmic scourge, which is a huge drawcard. The Inhibitor...

2 Bodies – Origins

The Superficial Contact of Two Bodies (or 2 Bodies for short) is my current work in progress.

The premise is a simple one. The universe is ending. Not all at once but in pieces. Vast stellar systems are collapsing in upon themselves in frighteningly quick time that suggests even the universal laws are not constant. All this is happening centuries from now. Humanity has spread far and wide to establish ‘The Thousand Worlds’ – a collection of self-governing systems loosely held together by tra...