Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 20

Orbit live event with Adrian Tchaikovsky

In a couple of days I'll be doing a joint live event with the excellent Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Clarke award winning novel Children of Time.

Per the press release:

"Join science fiction authors Alastair Reynolds and Adrian Tchaikovsky (
@aptshadow) next Wednesday June 3 for a conversation about their books, space travel, and giant spiders. Plus, a live Q&A!"

Register here:
https://www.crowdcast.io/e/reynolds-tchaikovsky-jun2020/register
I hope to see and interact with some of you on Wednesday.

Just testing

It's of no real importance to me whether or not Cummings resigns. It might be a symbolic victory but I don't doubt for a second that DC would remain in some position of influence, even if it was mediated through unofficial back-channels. What is far more important is the bringing down of this government of smirking incompetents, typified by Michael Gove's preposterous assertion (via his LBC interview this morning) that he too has been known to take a drive in his car to test out his eyesight.

But...

Events

I'm very glad indeed that Boris Johnson made a recovery from Covid-19, because I still hold out some hope that the fucker will be held accountable.

As you were.

Bat tales

Here in Wales, lockdown continues - our devolved government has, along with Scotland and Northern Ireland, taken a more cautious approach than Westminster to relaxing the restrictions, and I think wisely so.

Through all this, I've been fortunate to be in a position of self-employment where my day-to-day routine hasn't been greatly affected by Covid-19. My daily routine remains about the same. I'm not at my most productive, and I'm conscious of that, but I'm getting things done slowly but surely. ...

A Super Lockdown Supermarionation Superconversation in 5...4...3

Over the course of a couple of weeks, I chatted with my old friend and occasional collaborator Stephen Baxter about our mutual affection for the TV series and films of Gerry Anderson. If you haven't the slightest interest in puppets, toys, comics, and 1960s children's entertainment, there probably isn't very much point reading on. If, however, you share our enthusiasm, or are at least sympathetic to it, you may find something to enjoy in the following. My very grateful thanks to Steve for...

This week in Hard SF

From Dragon's Egg, published in 1980.

Two things

Jonathan Strahan and Gary Wolfe have been doing 10 minute podcast interviews with various writers as an extension to their weekly Coode Street features. Jonathan and I chatted last week, mentioning a few books in passing, and the results are here:

http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/2020/04/18/episode-390-ten-minutes-with-alastair-reynolds/

Be sure to check out the other podcasts, and my thanks to Jonathan and Gary for taking the time to give us these chats.

As mentioned in the previous post,...

Space Rocks Uplink

A thing happening tomorrow evening (5.30pm BST, 6.30pm CEST) with Pippa and me, as a Space Rocks initiative during Covid 19.

Subscribe here.

The Far Future in science fiction

Here's an unpublished essay on the far future, which was written as a chapter for an academic text on modern SF. The chapter was written at short notice after the original author (identity not known to me) was unable to deliver their contribution.
I was asked to concentrate my discussion on more recent works of SF, with an emphasis on post-2000 material. I was also invited to discuss my own works in this context, which I did. In their comments, the editors asked that I spend less time...

Clarkesworld interview

Clarkesworld's Arley Sorg very kindly offered to interview me for the March edition. You can read the result here:

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/reynolds_interview/