Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 35

All change!

 I've had a major overhaul of my author website:

www.alastairreynolds.com

The URL hasn't changed, but the site now has a totally new structure and look, and should be much more easy for me to maintain and update in the future. As part of the revamp, there is now a dedicated blogging area as part of the new site. This begs the question of what is to become of this blog, and my first thought - other than to discontinue this one - was to continue cross-posting entries to both sites, at least...

Class of '88

Or thereabouts. After gaining my degree in astronomy from Newcastle in 1988, I moved to Scotland to begin my postgraduate studies in St Andrews. I was to spend three years working toward my PhD in optical astronomy, during which period I also made my first professional sales as a writer. Here, a quarter of a century later, are four of us from those days.




I'm on the left; next to me is Gavin Ramsay, who joined us in St Andrews a year or so after my arrival. Gavin has remained in astronomy and...

Rossgate

By now the events surrounding Jonathan Ross's proposed MC'ing of the Hugo awards have been well covered - see (for instance) Cheryl Morgan: http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=18632 and Adam Whitehead: http://thewertzone.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/worldcon-2014-announces-jonathan-ross.html

I did not think Ross was a good choice for the MC and tweeted as such. But my dislike of Ross's TV persona was my own problem, nobody else's, and I would have been far better off shutting up. Furthermore, despite th...

Does it have to be this way?

Perhaps it's always been like this, but I can't help feeling that the dialogue around SF&F has in recent years grown increasingly toxic and counter-productive. It may well have been just the same in the old days of mimeographed fanzines and letters columns - feuds run long and deep in literary circles - but there's no doubt that the nature of online discussion has raised the temperature, enabling flamewars and "fails" to flare up with numbing regularity. If they burned out as quickly as t...

Sword and Laser video interview

This coming Saturday (18th) I'm doing a video interview with the good people from Sword and Laser, who are based near San Francisco. I'll be Skyping in from Wales. If you'd like to ask me a question, you can drop a suggestion here:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1653946-your-questions-for-video-with-alastair-reynolds

Sorry about the short notice.

Horizon of events

I'm out and about in the UK quite a bit this month.

The evening of this coming Wednesday, 6th November, I'll be speaking at the Institute of Physics in Derby:

http://derbyiop.eventbrite.co.uk/

I'll also be signing at Waterstones Derby from 2 - 3 pm on the same day.

The following Thursday, 7th November, I'll be speaking at the Cambridge University Science Fiction and Fantasy Society in, unsurprisingly, Cambridge.

http://cusfs.soc.srcf.net/home

I'm not entirely sure how it works if you are not a mem...

Newport State of Mind

This weekend I'll be participating in Space, Time, Machine and Monster, a literary festival in Newport, South Wales.

http://www.literaturewales.org/space-time-machine-and-monster/

Quoting from the website:

"Following a hugely successful first outing in Pontypridd in 2008, the Space, Time, Machine & Monster literary festival returns for two days packed full of science-fiction, fantasy and horror. Expect talks, workshops, film screenings, panel events and competitions for adults, teens and you...

Two Trunks

According to popular wisdom, all writers have at least one early and unpublished book that is best consigned to obscurity - the so called "trunk novel", the idea being that you keep it locked away in a trunk rather than doing the sensible thing and binning it. According to another branch of popular wisdom, the first thing writers do when they're stuck for inspiration is dust off a trunk novel and pass it off as a fresh new book. I'm sure that happens occasionally, but I suspect the truth is t...

Incoming

ON THE STEEL BREEZE is only ten days from UK publication, and at least one bookseller seems to have copies in stock already, although they may not yet be for sale. Having just returned from America, and with my post still to be collected from my neighbour, it's entirely possible that there might be a finished copy in my mail as well. I'll find out soon enough. It's always a sobering moment, the first time you hold the end product. Months or years of work, distilled into a rectangle of card an...

Remember the Alamo

I enjoyed the World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio. As always, I'm left with slightly mixed feelings about what I expect to get out of such a gathering, as well as what I'm actually bringing to the show by being there. But there's no doubt that from my perspective as a writer and program participant, it all seemed well organised. The convention centre was, from a British viewpoint, typically huge and at times bewildering in its layout. I never did make it to the Green Room. But the...