2024: The Year of the Optical Illusion
Is it a rabbit or a cat? An old woman, or a young man with a beard? A long year of change in which one person began and another ended, or an inestimably small increment in which nothing was achieved but an eye blink in which the world distorted, then pulled itself back to its usual shape? I haven’t got to grips with my 2024, and I’m at the summation stage, which feels a bit dangerous. I won’t decide upon an answer. I’m still writing it out. I’ll get back to you once I can see it clearly. This could take a really long time. My eyesight is awful.
In the meantime, here’s an unclear look at my writing adventures this year.
***
Three Eight One! It was published by Solaris in January 2024, and made The Guardian’s Best SF list of the year this month. It was my lockdown novel, filled with yearning for getting out and going to places even if none of the places made sense any more. It’s very personal, but also comprised of images and situations and emotions about which we’ve learned to hold certain expectations. It’s amazing to think that it has meant something to readers on those terms. Some inexplicable experiences we share.
I haven’t been brave enough to listen to it myself, but an audio version of Three Eight One was released a few months ago. Wild. The paperback version, with a stylish new cover, is being published in 2025.
From the new to the old, and round in a circular fashion: the tenth anniversary edition of The Beauty, accompanied by The Arrival of Missives, was published by Solaris with an introduction by the wonderful MR Carey. For the first time there’s also an audio version of it, too. I can’t tell you how strange it has been in the last few months to walk into my local bookshop and find copies of The Beauty in hardback face out, greeting me with a yellow stare. It’s been translated into other languages, and it’s both bizarre and brilliant when other creative people tell me they’ve found inspiration in it. It started out so small, and just kept growing.
***
My collection of short stories, Drive or Be Driven, was published by NewCon Press in April 2024 and got a starred review from Publishers Weekly that made me an extremely happy pedestrian. It’s part of a series of SF collections called Polestars, and I’m very proud to be included in a wonderful line-up of work there. These stories of travel are mainly SF flavoured, I’d say, including future cars and spaceships and deep sea exploration. But there’s also historical fantasy, and horror, and long ocean journeys and walks deep in scary woods, and treks to the beach, and psychological roadtrips, and a symbolic prison break by a car hood ornament. I loved putting this collection together. I hope it’s finding its way to readers.
I also had work included in three excellent anthologies:
Heartwood, a homage to Robert Holdstock’s influential Mythago Wood, was published by PS Publishing and edited by Dan Coxon. I wanted to take the opportunity to bring a bit of Arthurian Legend to life, and wrote a story called The Known Song. Mythago Wood is loved by so many readers; I hope I managed to convey some of my own history within its depths for the story.
I really enjoyed rediscovering Zamyatin’s We for the anthology The Utopia of Us, published by Luna Press and edited by Teika Marija Smits. We is one of those novels that has puzzled and surprised me for decades, creeping back into my thoughts every now and again. This time around I connected with its sense of humour and wrote a story called Intrinsic – Extrinsic – Terrific, set in the world of We, that dealt with the way we make constrained choices in the framework available to us, and call that hope.
In October there was a charity writing day for Macmillan cancer support via Green Ink, undertaken by a host of great writers, and I managed to complete a three thousand word short story in eight hours called Hair of the World. It features a green hairy wall. The stories seem to come out even stranger than usual under a strict time limit. The anthology was only available to those who donated – many thanks to all who did.
Parsec 11, the speculative fiction magazine edited by Ian Whates, featured work by writers attending WorldCon in Glasgow, and my story, about wanting to be part of an easier world, was called The Inhalations. There have been some lovely reviews of this issue of the magazine, and WorldCon was an overwhelming and incredibly positive experience. I signed books, spoke on panels, even gave a table talk and bribed the attendees with sweets and free books. If you came along for that – thank you! It was one of the highlights of my year.
Speaking of speaking, I got the chance early in 2024 to have a conversation with Martin MacInnes about his novel In Ascension. We spent an hour or so at Waterstones Trafalgar Square chatting about science fiction, space fiction, concepts of futures and otherness and things that influence us. He’s a wonderful writer. Thanks to Waterstones for letting me bombard him with questions.
I haven’t spoken much about Three Eight One because it’s really difficult to do that, at least eloquently, but I did attempt a conversation with editor Gareth Jelley for Interzone podcast. Listening back to it, it’s quite entertaining in our attempts to pin down the slippery nature of the story.
Sticking with Interzone, I’ve continued to write my regular column Climbing Stories for the magazine, spanning books, films, SF, fantasy, horror, video games, plants, monsters, museums, training montages, and other subjects. I’ve got a couple lined up for 2025 already, including a dive into the business of horror writing as represented in horror anthology movies.
***
In fact, when it comes to things I’ve written this year, horror films are a big influence. I’ve been working on a couple of novellas with some of my favourite weird films of the 1950s and 1960s strongly in mind.
I have finished a new novel – a complete antidote to the machinations of Three Eight One – and will start the editing process next year.
Short story-wise, I’ve written a few this year for various anthologies and magazines that will be published in 2025, starting with a magazine that I’ve enjoyed for years: Three-Lobed Burning Eye held a kickstarter and met its targets (hurray!), so I’m contributing a story. It’ll be great to be back in 3LBE again, after a decade.
There’s also a story of mine in an anthology of tales from the Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project. I lived in Lincolnshire for a while and was delighted to get the chance to write about a piece of folklore from that county – here’s an article about my choice. Five Leaves Publications will release the anthology at the start of 2025.
There are some exciting non-fiction projects coming up next year, including a first: I got the chance to write an introduction for the 30th anniversary reissue of a wonderful book by an author I love. Feeling very lucky about that.
But the big thing next year is, of course, the April publication of City of All Seasons, a collaborative novel I wrote with Oliver Langmead. Review copies are out in the world now. Titan Books have made such a great job of this book, including beautiful illustrations and a gorgeous cover. Thanks to all at Titan.
City of All Seasons has been a big part of my writing life for the past few years, and it’s very exciting that publication is only months away. This has been such a fulfilling and energising project for me, and I hope for Ollie, too. We’re looking forward to being able to talk about the book more next year; hopefully there’ll be a few events lined up to chat about it together.
***
More communication! Maybe I need a bit of help from everyone else to make sense of 2024. I’ll look around and reach out, and remind myself that every writer is trying to make sense of the senseless. But nonsense gets a bad press, I think. Duck or rabbit, young man or old woman, long journey or short bunny hop to the next project, reading or writing, wherever you are and whatever you’re seeing, I hope you’ve found the things you need along the way this year.
I’ll be back with a few mentions of my favourite reads of 2024 before the year is out.
