Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 52

Four events

Four things I should have mentioned sooner:

On Tuesday September 15th I'll be talking on the subject of science anfd science fiction (with the slant on astronomy) at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. My talk runs between 7pm and 8.30pm and admission costs eight pounds.

On saturday September 26th I'll be guest of honour at Bristolcon, a small, one-day convention being staged by the Bristol Fantasy and SF Society at Mercure Holland House Hotel and Spa, Redcliffe Hill (not far from Bristol Temple ...

Update

It's been nearly another month, hasn't it. Sorry all. Really I've just had my head down, getting on with stuff. Edits and queries on TW, including about 12,000 words of last minute additions and substitutions. A new story done and dusted, and another finished today, both novellettes (although at 17,000 words today's is nudging into short novella territory). Both stories, incidentally, are set on Earth - no spaceships! More on these in due course. I need to write at least one more story this y...

Still here

A friend asked if all was well, given the lack of updates here recently. Sorry for that. There's absolutely nothing wrong, it's just that I've been busy with various activities and beyond the mere fact of being busy, which isn't itself very interesting, there's been precious little to report. A round of last minute rewrites on bits of TW, faltering progress on book 1 of 11K, a short story with dinosaurs in it, with two more (not with dinosaurs) to finish by the end of the year. If this sounds li

Man on the Moon

Well I sort of nearly did it, if you accept "by the 20th" to mean "on the 20th" in the UK, and if you allow for painting and some details still be completed (like the entire LM). But anyway, I've got to the top and barring some details on the second stage, the Saturn is more or less complete externally. I've made a start on the "black bits", as we scientists call them, but here the Revell painting guides seem to be way off, so I'm referring to photographs. There's a tiny 1/96th astronaut in the

Ladies and gentleman we are floating in space

OK, it's getting tight. At this rate I'll be satisfied with "topping out" the Saturn V by the 20th even if there are still some details to be painted and the LM completed.

In other news, footage has surfaced of Toni Jerrman and I destroying Pandora's Box:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W9CFe...

Finally, I see that the issue of Death Ray with my story "Monkey Suit" in it (along with a Bengal Station story by Eric Brown) is now on the shelves.

 

Finlandia

Back from Finncon, which was every bit as good as I'd hoped, and then some. The Finns are great hosts and really know how to organise - despite dealing with some 15,000 attendees (Finncon has, at least until now, been run jointly with Animecon) it all went smoothly - or at least appeared so to this participant. Helsinki is one of my favorite cities anywhere in the world and it was good to be back - good also to meet up with old friends like Toni Jerrman, Jukka Halme and Hannu Blomilla, among oth

Summer of 69

One week on - and not much to show for it, truth to tell. I was premature in thinking that I was nearly done with the S1C, for in fact there was quite a bit more to it, and I've only made a start on the painting of the black patches.

What you can see here is the entire S1C, the interstage ring and the start of the S11 stage.

I'm still fairly confident of finishing this thing by the 20th, but most of the progress will be in the last week, and there may still be a few bits to paint.

The quality of t

Saturn V

Here's the fruit of today's progress: most of the S1C stage completed, together with the five F-1 engines. For contrast (below)  is the real thing: this is the horizontal Saturn V at Banana Creek, Kennedy Space Center, captured in October.

The real things aren't anywhere near as shiny (or red on the inside) as Revell's paint guidelines would have you think, but I'd imagine that the engines shown here have tarnished a bit over the years. There's another F-1 at one of the viewing stands which I wis

Rocket in my pocket

And now for something completely different ... I thought it would be a bit of a laugh if, instead of the usual rambling, sporadic blather, I tried to do something truly constructive and useful with this blog. And what could be more constructive - or appropriate in 2009 - than to build this 1/96th scale plastic model kit of a Saturn V rocket so that I can have something really impressive sitting on my desk? It may all end in tears, but I'm going to shoot for assembling it by the 40th anniversary

It's blitz

News of the ten book contract is out there now, so many thanks for the congratulations and good wishes I've received, and the many kind things I've seen here and there on the internet. As some have noted, while it's good for me - no bones about that - it also says something encouraging about the state of the genre. Far from dying on its feet (I've been reading obituaries for SF for about as long as I've been reading them about rock music) it's not doing at all badly, and may even be in the ascen