Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 25

Orion nebula

Once or twice a year I hope to be able to get a reasonable shot of M42, the great nebula in Orion. Here's last night's effort, assembled from 20 1 minute frames. I also took 20 equivalent dark frames to eliminate pixel noise, and they seem to have worked quite well. I did the processing in Nebulosity, a very nice astronomy image-acquisition and processing package.


What I've learned from this is that I still need to go to shorter exposures not to wash out the central core. Also, examining this...

Spacerocks

I'll be participating in Spacerocks, a one-day event at the Indigo in London on April 22nd, 2018. Other guests will include Tim Peake and Charlotte Hatherley, one of whom has been into space, and one of whom has played on several rather fabulous records - two equally noteworthy accomplishments, in my world.

Spacerocks has a Facebook page, which you can visit here:

https://www.facebook.com/spacerocksofficial

There is also a Twitter handle: @spacerockslive

And an Instagram thing which I don't...

Direct from Mexico

I bet my wife a bottle of beer that Trump wouldn't make it to the end of his first year.



I lost.

Mark E Smith

Mark E Smith, who died on January 24th at the age of 60, was the singer and primer mover behind The Fall, one of the most enduring and prolific groups to emerge from the British punk explosion in the mid 1970s. Smith's death came as a jolt, but not quite a shock, as it had been clear for some months that he was in very poor health. Of course I had hoped that he would make a recovery and resume touring, but the omens were not good.

The Fall's music had been an all-consuming obsession of mine fo...

Ursula Le Guin

"She was a better writer than any of us, past or present – we have lost our benchmark of excellence."

Christopher Priest has said all that needs to be said. I had never met her, nor read enough of her, but I regard The Lathe of Heaven as one of the greatest SF novels of the last fifty years.

Read the rest of Christopher Priest's remarks here:

https://christopher-priest.co.uk/ursula

New Prefect Dreyfus story

In advance of Elysium Fire, which appears at the end of this month, I've written a short story featuring Prefect Dreyfus, and which I hope will serve as a gentle introduction to the world of Panoply and the Glitter Band for those who have yet to read the first novel.

You can read "Open and Shut" over at the Gollancz blog:

https://www.gollancz.co.uk/2018/01/open-shut-short-story-alastair-reynolds/

I hope you enjoy it.

Al

Two things that are new, some stories, and another novel

I've been head-down writing a new book for most of this year, so updates have been few and far between, especially these last few months. I'm pleased to have delivered the book in question, the direct sequel to Revenger, and hope to share a bit more news about it as we go through the usual editing cycle. The book does have a provisional title, but it won't be Revealer, although you'll see that listed here and there. That was a working-working title which wasn't ever meant to be shared with th...

Sherlock Holmes: Indestructible

In 1942 Basil Rathone and Nigel Bruce starred in their third film together, Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror. Set during the second world war, rather than the more usual late Victorian period, this briskly paced film includes a title card which explains that the titular detective is "ageless, invincible and unchanging".

Before we are introduced to any of the characters, the central problem is made clear. A Nazi propaganda station is broadcasting as "The Voice of Terror", crowing over re...

Gestation Time

In the previous post I mentioned that my new story "Night Passage" - just out in the Infinite Stars anthology - was one I was glad to see in print because it had taken about five years to finish. I thought that was approximately the case, but when I checked my hard drive I saw that I opened a file on that story at the end of November 2009, so the better part of eight years ago. That wasn't an attempt at the story itself, but as per my usual working method, a set of notes toward a possible ide...

Infinite Stars

Out now is Infinite Stars, a mixed reprint/original anthology edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt:


The book contains an entirely new 16,000 word story of mine, entitled "Night Passage", which happens to be set in the Revelation Space universe. The story revolves around the discovery of the first "Shroud", a class of alien artefact which goes on to play a significant role in the future history.

My story took about five years to write, so I am very pleased to finally see it both completed and in print...