Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 48

Welcome your new Space Pony overlords

I spent last weekend in Derby, attending the excellent Alt.Fiction, a slickly run and enjoyable cross-genre event with a nice mixture of SF, fantasy, crime and horror writers (and readers) present. As much a workshop as a convention in the usual sense, it was terrifically good fun and well situated in the heart of Derby, within easy range of restaurants and reasonably priced hotels. My thanks to Alex Davies for the invitation, and to the other guests and attendees for making everything so ple...

Onto book 2

While we're going through the slow process of editing BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH, I've begun to make tentative inroads into the second novel of the trilogy. I have a title, but I'm not telling the world yet - I may well change my mind.

IF BRE deals with the colonisation and exploration of the solar system over the next 150 years - along with some snapshots of life on Earth, in a peaceful, prosperous post-climate change future - then the second book leaps ahead several hundred years, into the middle...

Vast

There's been much talk recently about the invisibility of women in SF, for excellent reason. In the Guardian's reader poll of favorite SF writers, for instance, only 4% of the 500 plus books mentioned are by women. Polls like that are a waste of time under the best of circumstances but the disparity does serve to highlight the problem. Anyone with an eye on the SF blogosphere is probably more than up to speed on the surrounding debate, but this post by Cheryl Morgan is a good entry point into...

Dendrocopos major

I love the way woodpeckers come pre-installed with Woodpecker 1.0. The bird on the left, with the prominent red cap, is a juvenile, the one on the right an adult female. I shot this picture this morning through two windows (the living room and the conservatory) so it's not the sharpest of images, but it's so rare to see two great spotted woodpeckers on the same feeder that I'm happy with any shot at all. I've been enthralled by these fascinating, intelligent and colourful creatures since I wa...

Alt Fiction in Derby

I should have mentioned this sooner, but I'll be guest of honour (along with Dan Abnett) at Alt Fiction, taking place in Derby on the weekend of 25th - 26th June. In addition we'll be joined by speakers Tony Ballantyne, Cathy Brett, Keith Brooke, Mark Chadbourn, Stephen Deas, Paul Finch, John Jarrold, Juliet McKenna, Mark Morris, Adam Nevill, Mark Charan Newton, Sarah Pinborough, Robert Shearman, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Conrad Williams, Chris Wooding and many more.

http...

TEDx talk, story sale, Sturgeon shortlist

The good people behind the Cardiff TEDx event have now edited and uploaded videos of the day's talks - you can access them from the main TEDx website at http://tedxcardiff.co.uk/ or hop directly to YouTube.

In other news, Ian Whates has kindly agreed to take a new 7000 word story of mine, "For the Ages", to appear in SOLARIS RISING, a new original anthology which I would imagine will appear in 2012. My story was inspired by this Scientific American article on The End of Cosmology (unfortunatel...

Cryo-arithmetic engines?

From the Wikipedia entry on Revelation Space universe technology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_Revelation_Space

"Cryo-arithmetic engines are a specific class of quantum computer discovered by the Conjoiners. When certain algorithms are executed on processors of this architecture, it leads to a local violation of the Second law of thermodynamics: the computer gets colder instead of hotter. Consequently, cryo-arithmetic engines have massive industrial (as opposed to computation...

Ladytron

For the Manic Pop Thrills podcast I picked a few songs for Mike to insert into the interview, but of course we didn't play them on the night. Listening to part 1 of the podcast now, I'm once again reminded of how utterly bloody fantastic this song is:


The video is equally marvellous and bizarre. I have the sense that it's referencing something, anyone know what? Some half-remembered East European childrens TV series, perhaps?

Scales at Lightspeed, and some gratuitous John Grant

In 2009 I wrote and narrated a very short story for the Guardian. You can now read Scales at http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/. Thank you to John Joseph Adams for taking the story, and to Erin for the interview which accompanies the piece.

Talking of science fiction and space travel ... who wouldn't want to go to Mars? Or even Marz? Actually, it's about a sweet shop, not the planet, but this is a wonderful track from John Grant's new album "The Queen of Denmark", which is itself utterly splen...

Manic Pop Thrills podcast

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of returning to St Andrews after twenty years. During my stay I was well looked after by Yvonne and Mike Melville, and it was a delight to record a podcast for Mike's excellent Manic Pop Thrills blog. Mike and I have distinctly similar tastes in music.

Part 1 is up first; I rabbited on for so long that Mike had to split the podcast into two. During the podcast I talk about music and writing, and we introduce a few songs along the way. Mike will get part...