Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 53

Terminal World art

Atlantis Redux

Atlantis

I'm in the US right now. Thanks to my pal Louise, I was lucky enough to get ringside seats for the departure of STS-125 on its way to the Hubble Space Telescope.

It was spectacular, everything I hoped it would be.  For added comedy value, your humble correspondent was looking at the *wrong pad* until seconds before ignition (when his wife pointed out that everyone else had their cameras pointed *that way*). Never mind, I did take some truly awesome photographs as the shuttle cleared the pad and b

New stuff

Once again I must apologise for my slowness in responding to both comments posted here and emails sent to the Dendrocopus account. I'm getting there, but slowly. Thanks for your patience...

In the meantime, I've finished a couple of stories. One of them, "Monkey Suit", is a 5000 word piece set in the Revelation Space universe. More on that when I know for sure that it's going to appear where I think it will. The other story, a somewhat longer piece entitled "Pandora's Box", (not set in the RS uni

Long-time readers may remember this post (you...

Long-time readers may remember this post (you can find it in the archive, along with comments):

Wednesday, 8 August 2007 What film is this?

"Has anyone else seen the early 1960s Czech science fiction film Ikarie XB1? (Also released as Voyage to the End of the Universe).

When I was a kid, I saw a film on television that had a considerable effect on me - so much so, that at least part of it fed into Chasm Cit

Less busy. But still busy.

Well I'm back in circulation. I've just done a massive catch-up on the Dendrocopus email account and will now move onto the comments on this page. Give me a day or two and I might actually get ahead of myself.

TERMINAL WORLD is now a finished book, barring editorial changes (I say that every year, as if the edits were a mere frippery, when in fact they can be weeks of tough work) and I'm about as happy with it as I ever am. Objectivity goes out the window when you've been doing little else than s

Busy

My apologies for the lack of response to various comment posts; I've been busy - very busy - but all are appreciated. I'm now off to London to participate in the BSFA panel discussion on the current shortlist, alongside Jon Courtenay Grimwood and Adam Roberts. Normal service will resume shortly, when I should have some more to say about TERMINAL WORLD.

The wine of silence

Some time ago I mentioned my exciting journey into the world of guitar lessons, something that, I'm pleased to say, is on-going and still proving enormously stimulating.

I'm never going to be anything other than a hobbyist guitar player, someone who enjoys making some vaguely tuneful noises in the privacy of their own bedroom - know your limitations, as they say. But I enjoy reading around the subject of guitar playing, and as a consequence - because I've been given a piece to study which involve

Myers-Briggs

While searching for stuff about myself on the internet (egomaniacal, moi?), I came across some kind of website/forum thing for people of the INTP (Introversion, iNtuition, Thinking, Perception) personality type. A thread was running in which the participants speculated as to which authors might fall into the same grouping, and my name was raised as a possible INTP (or "architect", in the Kiersey classification). According to the Wikipedia page, INTP types make up about 1 - 5 % of the population.

The Big Sky

As mentioned here, I went up to the Science Museum a couple of weeks ago to do a short piece for the BBC. While I was there I popped into the shop and treated myself to a gadget I'd been meaning to get hold of ever since reading about it in one of the astronomy magazines: a nifty little beast called a Celestron SkyScout. I nearly bought one in Chicago last year, but didn't fancy trying to get it through customs, given that it's about the cost of a mid-range digital camera and I'd already picked