Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 50

SciFi Now and other goings on

As noted in the comments to my 28th December post (thanks) the current issue of SciFi Now (150) has some stuff from me in it, if anyone's interested. I did a short editorial, a book review (Jon Courtenay Grimwood's The Fallen Blade, which I'm pleased to say I liked rather a lot), some commentary on six space-based films that I'm fond of, and a sidebar paragraph on the issue's classic SF book discussion, which I selected. I also chose the other reviewed book titles, although, somewhat disappoi...

Computa 2 - continued and concluded

 
"The story of a coputer that went rong" - good to see I got the hang of accurate back cover copy at an early point in my career.

Minor update

November and December were busy months. In addition to finishing the new book, I was also happy to accept the kind offer to guest edit an issue of SciFi Now magazine. I selected some books for review, wrote a review myself, did an editorial and contributed to a couple of book and film related articles. I don't know when this issue will hit the stands but I thought I may as well mention it now - keep an eye out if you're interested, and (of course) happen to live where SciFi Now is readily ava...

Seasons greetings

Back

Sorry about the lack of updates around here. I've just delivered a novel, so normal service (or what passes for it) will resume very shortly. Cheers!

new blog

New blog:

Approaching Pavonis

Not much there yet, but it's early days.

Teahouse foreclosure notice

I'm abandoning this blog, but not for any apocalyptic reasons. I've decided to start a new one which will hopefully be less clunky to maintain. I will post a link here when the new blog is active.

In the meantime, I've overhauled the website:

www.alastairreynolds.com

and made a note on the site to the effect that I won't be (and never was going to be) attending the SFX Weekender, even though I seem be listed here and there as a guest.

Rob Holdstock

I met Rob Holdstock for the first time in 1991, at the Harrogate Mexicon, the first convention I attended. Although I'd published a couple of stories in Interzone, and sold a couple more, I was still pretty much a nobody as far as the wider SF world was concerned. Despite this, Rob Holdstock (who was at the bar with Chris Evans) bought me a pint and talked to me like I was one of the gang. I never forgot that. I was out of the country for most of the next 18 years so we only met on a couple o...

The light of good works shine

I'm back. Many thanks for all the emails - I am slowly beginning to return to some kind of normal activity and will be responding in due course. They were all hugely appreciated during a difficult time.

OK - some time ago I mentioned one or two stories I had been working on, and alluded to one without saying anything about the title or destination of the finished work. I can now reveal to an anxiously waiting world that the story in question is entitled "At Budokan" and has been accepted for p...

Ares 1-X rollout

Good to see the Ares 1-X rolled out of the VAB today. I just hope there's some money in the pot to actually do something with it. I'm all for the Ares program, even if in many ways it looks like a throwback to the Apollo era (and in terms of some of the hardware, that's pretty much what it is). Granted, it would have been nice if the shuttle concept could have been evolved, rather than (as it seems to me) largely discarded. Perhaps we'll come back to reusable spaceplanes later in the...