Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 31

Hey Joe

Here are some one-line plot synopses from a TV series set close to the present day.

After a military coup, a dictator misappropriates global aid funds to develop drone warfare technology to use against his own citizens. A stricken submarine ends up in the territorial waters of a Central American failed state, threatening to derail international peace talks. In a Middle Eastern Sultanate, a political assassination leads to a constitutional crisis, imperilling the progressive, democratic policie...

Revenger

If you’ve ever tried to sleep in a grumbly old house with pipes that hiss and clank, floors that creak, walls that groan, windows that rattle, you’ve maybe a tenth of an idea what it’s like to try sleeping on a ship like the Monetta’s Mourn. If it wasn’t the restless noises of the ship it was someone barking out an instruction, someone calling the hour of a watch, or a mad woman screaming while bound to a bed.
Just when I might have managed to sleep for half an hour, there was a soft knock, an...

The Best Of

I'm immensely pleased that 2016 will see the publication of my Best Of, courtesy of Subterranean Press and Orion books, who will both be doing editions. Jonathan and Bill have done a sterling job selecting the stories, no easy task given the number to choose from, and  - since I was party to the whole process - I can state that there were some very difficult choices to be made about which pieces to omit or include. The book is physically huge, and it really wouldn't have been feasible to...

Asimov's reviews

Just a note to say that I'm still continuing with my 2015 Asimov's reviews, for the few that are interested, but (of necessity)  I'm reading a few other things at the moment before I return to the magazine.

In the meantime, for those thinking of nominating stories in the various awards, here are the issues I've done to date:

January 2015

February 2015

March 2015

April/May 2015

June 2015

August 2015

cheers!

Closing Contact

A few weeks ago I turned up this typescript, which was my first submission to Interzone, and indeed my first submission to any kind of paying market. The story was written at the end of 1985, and submitted at the start of the new year of 1986, making it almost exactly thirty years old. I make no claims for the quality of the story; indeed - as you'll see - it was rejected, and its flaws were obvious enough to me even then, sufficiently so that I made no effort to rework it. But hopefully it's...

Asimov's - August 2015

The August issue is a particularly strong one. Earlier this year I lavished praise on Nick Wolven's "On The Night of The Robo-Bulls and the Zombie Dancers", and Wolven's lead piece in this issue - the equally awkwardly titled "No Placeholder For You, My Love", while shorter, is no less strong. We meet the protagonist, Claire, at a dinner party in what appears to be New Orleans, where Claire in turn meets Byron, a mysterious and attractive stranger, but before long we're being clued in that al...

Asimov's July 2015

As the leaves begin to drop and the warm summer nights finally give way to the chill of autumn, it's time to review ... oh, wait, it's December already, and I'm still on the July issue. Never mind, I never promised you a rose garden, so let's crack on.
 
Mary Robinette Kowal delivers the lead novelette, "Like Native Things" and it's a nastily clever take on the idea of humans being able to jack into the nervous systems of other animals. Tilda, the scientist protagonist, is duped by bad-gu...

Chasm City sketches

A sort-out of an old box turned up a notebook containing sketches and thoughts toward what eventually became Chasm City, my second novel. The notes were written - to the best of my knowledge - in early 1999. By that point I had already completed one draft of the book, but much of the sleeper ship subplot - Sky, the grubs and so on - was absent from the first version. These sketches were done as I thought my way into the more complex story that eventually figured in the final book.

Cross-sectio...

Star Wars

Over on File770, there's been some discussion about the way the SF community responded to Star Wars when it came out in 1977:

http://file770.com/?p=25931

Personally, I loved Star Wars with every beat of my heart and still do. What's often forgotten is that, over in the UK, we didn't get the film until early in 1978. I saw it on my twelth birthday, in Swansea, and I can still recollect pretty much every detail of both the film and the drive to and from it along the M4, past the alien nightscape...

Asimovs - April/May 2015 double issue

As I alluded to in my review of the June issue, I had to set this one aside for the time being due to losing my physical copy of the magazine. I'd been reading it during a trip to Geekopolis, the big multimedia comvention in Paris, and to the best of my recollection I must have set it down on a table during an interview and then left it there. Sheila Williams, the editor of Asimov's, very kindly sent me a pdf of the edition but that brought its own complications. I could only read it on a lap...