Alastair Reynolds's Blog, page 7

CP, Gollanczfest, Eric, new book etc

 Now that a month has gone by since Locus published a number of appreciations of Chris Priest, I think it's safe to offer up my own contribution. I could have said a great deal more, of course, but that would still only scratch the surface of the times I spent with Chris over almost a quarter of a century, on and off. His friendship meant a great deal and while our tastes in science fiction were not always aligned (but sometimes were) I took every chance to learn from him as a writer. I think hi...

First newt of 2024

 I mean to say something about Chris Priest, but in the meantime, I did a bit of pond-dipping for the first time this year (it's remarkably mild and a friend turned up a frog yesterday) and found one of the resident newts doing well.

The Artwork Revisitation

 If you've been reading this blog for at least a couple of years you might remember this bit of acrylic art I put up early in 2022:

It was OK but something about it wasn't quite clicking with me. Then I read a recent article in The Guardian which included the brilliant Chris Foss talking about AI-generated imitations of his own style, and how they could never be mistaken for the real thing. 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/21/we-need-to-come-together-british-artists-team-up-to-figh...

MACHINE VENDETTA out in UK and US

 My new novel is out - published on Tuesday in the States, and today in the UK. It's the third in the Prefect Dreyfus sub-series and also a book in the Revelation Space universe. It's likely to be the last word on the RS universe for a bit, not because I'm fed up with it, but because I want to concentrate on standalones from now on.

There have been a few early reviews. Publisher's Weekly called it "a touching and spectacularly intricate sequel that also functions well as a standalone", while Book...

You could do worse.

 

It's coming on Christmas.

 A new story of mine, "Lottie and the River", will appear in the Christmas issue of New Scientist, with a publication date of December 16th. Not only that, but it's a (mildly) Christmas-themed story. I'm extremely happy to have had this chance to contribute a bit of fiction to NS. Many thanks to Alison Flood and all at NS for having me onboard.

I won't say anything else about the story except that it's 3500 words and not connected to anything else I've done, but it is science fiction, and the ill...

Space Rocks and other adventures

 After a relatively quiet summer, September and October were filled with travel, including a couple of international trips - a bit of a novelty these days.

Enjoying a typically delicious Dutch appelgebak in Leiden

I started off with an enjoyable weekend as Guest of Honour at the UK Fantasycon in Birmingham. I was very pleased to be invited, and the reception couldn't have been nicer. The event hotel seemed very good and quite well located for the centre. I sat in on a few panels, attended others, ...

You wait ages...

 Here's another slice of totally brilliant Gallic pop from the MEGAN soundtrack. I don't think I'd ever heard this before (it's from a few years ago), but wowie. Whoever was putting the music together for that film was really on it.

Freedom Fry

 Caught this lovely piece of ethereal French dreampop on the excellent soundtrack to MEGAN - and had to dig it out. Hope you like it as much as I do.

End User (a short story)

 You wait ages (or maybe not) for a piece of online fiction from me, and then another comes along. This one actually went online a few weeks ago, but I neglected to link to it. It's one of two pieces of commissioned fiction I've agreed to do for Auki Labs, an interesting new tech venture, based around the theme of augmented reality. This one (per the invitation from Auki) looks at some of the less great ramifications around big tech and user privacy.

https://auki.medium.com/end-user-a31957f10adf

T...