I've just finished the first draft of a new short story called MEMORY DUST, which clocks in at 5300 words. It's set against the same background as my earlier story SIX LIGHTS OFF GREEN SCAR and features the exploits of another "random jumper".
Incidentally, if you've read SIX LIGHTS, you'll know it ends on a cliffhanger. To find out what happens next, you'll need to stay tuned for this week's Friday Flash Fiction...
My sister drew my attention to this article in the Telegraph:
"Science fiction has always been interested in eternal questions about the nature of the universe, what constitutes reality, what it means to be human and so on. But genetic research, globalisation, environmental concerns, social breakdown are now pressing and familiar topics for everyone. If the literary world now thinks that JG Ballard is a mainstream writer and not a science fiction one, it is only because the rest of the world has caught up with the things against which he has been warning us for decades."
Recently, there has been a debate raging in Sf circles around something called "Mundane SF" - a brave experiment by some writers to produce valid SF stories without resorting to the standard SF tropes of artificial intelligence, interstellar travel, alien intelligence, or alternate universes - instead building their stories using only the real world technology available at the time of writing.
On the face of it, this sounds like an interesting exercise. But because the Mundanistas have presented the idea as some sort of manifesto, it has led to a division among SF writers and fans between those who support it as a new movement, and those who see it as an attack on traditional SF.
As Interzone 216 will be a special "Mundane" issue, I thought I'd take this opportunity to state my own position - which is very simple:
Some of the stories I have written could be classed as "mundane", others as "cyberpunk" or "space opera". And that's what "Mundane SF" is - another setting, another background against which to tell stories.
I find writing "Mundane SF" an interesting exercise, and I wish nothing but success to other writers taking up the challenge. But at the same time, there's no way I'm going to limit myself to exclusively writing "mundane" stories. Why would I? SF offers such a vast panorama of ideas and possibilities, it seems perverse to confine yourself to the here-and-now.
I like "Mundane SF" and I applaud its attempt to create a new branch of SF. I have no doubt that I will write some "mundane" stories. But for me, the canvas is wider and I will continue to go wherever my imagination takes me.
Rather than setting up artificial divisions in the SF community, we should be celebrating its diversity.
With Eastercon out of the way and the short story collection and flash fiction anthology both complete, it's time to turn my attention to some new projects. I didn't write as much as I wanted to last year, so I'm hoping to make up some ground over the next few months.
First on the list is a 5,000 word short story called "Gas Mask Girl". This is for a new anthology edited by Colin Harvey, and needs to be submitted by the end of June. I have written the outline and some character notes, now I need to get the story itself down on paper.
Second, I have written the opening 900 words of another 5,000 word short story with the provisional title "Caesar Murphy" - a sequel to my previous short story "Six Lights..." - and I'm hoping to enter it in the BSFA 50th Anniversary Short Story Competition. The closing date for that is 5th September.
I also have notes for a third short story called "Frankie" which I expect will stretch to around 3,000 words.
And over and above all of these is the next novel, which I hope will weigh in at around 100,000 words. I've written an outline and a whole box file full of notes, and now I just need a little time to clear my head and actually start writing the beast.
I'm currently working on a loose sequel to my short story 'Six Lights Off Green Scar' (which first appeared in Aphelion in April 2005 and was then translated into Polish for the magazine Nowa Fantastyka, before being heavily revised for the Infinity Plus website in June 2007, where it appeared alongside work by Michael Moorcock, Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, and Greg Egan).
The working title for the new story is 'Caesar Murphy'. I'm currently around 600 words into it and I'll post updates as I progress.
If you want to read 'Six Lights...' it's available here, for free: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/sixlights.htm
Sam Jordison has been writing about the collision of science fiction and mainstream literature in The Guardian.
1. Why Do Critics Still Sneer At Sci-Fi?
"Science fiction writers are dismissed by the mainstream, but for mind-expanding ideas and sheer narrative excitement the genre is hard to beat"
2. Literary Apocalypse Now, And Then
"So, novelists' visions of the future are looking very bleak at the moment. What's new?"
3. Reading Sci-Fi For Pleasure
"As soon as someone writes a really good sci-fi book it nearly always seems to get reclassified as something else."
I have a brand new short story called "The Redoubt" included in the December/January issue of Aphelion, now online.
The story follows a pair of young lovers - Scott and Anna - in the last hours of a doomed holiday romance, and asks: if you were given the chance to live forever, would you take it?
The setting for the story comes from a week I spent in France at the age of sixteen, camping with friends in the grounds of an Ecumenical monastery near Cluny. Although the characters and events in the story are fictitious, I’ve tried to describe the countryside, the village church and the hot, sticky weather as accurately as possible.
Also in this issue of Aphelion is a story by fellow Friday Flash Fictioneer, Neil Beynon.
Brian Appleyard explores the "sniffy" British attitude to science fiction in an article for the Sunday Times.
"The truth is," Aldiss has written, "that we are at last living in an SF scenario." A collapsing environment, a hyperconnected world, suicide bombers, perpetual surveillance, the discovery of other solar systems, novel pathogens, tourists in space, children drugged with behaviour controllers – it’s all coming true at last. Aldiss thinks this makes SF redundant. I disagree. In such a climate, it is the conventionally literary that is threatened, and SF comes into its own as the most hardcore realism.He goes on to claim that HG Wells was responsible for the bombing of Hiroshima and Astounding magazine caused the Cold War...
Part one of my story "The Last Reef" was broadcast on the "Beam Me Up" show on WRFR Radio on 1st December. The show is now available to listen to as a podcast. Part two will be broadcast next week.
On Saturday December 1st, Paul Cole will play a reading of my short story "The Last Reef" on his show on WRFR Radio in the States.
WRFR broadcasts live from studios in Knox County, serving the Rockland Maine area. The show will be live streamed during the radio broadcast, and will be available online afterwards as a podcast.
Because of its length, the story may be broadcast in two parts.
I've just submitted two previously unpublished stories, each to a market I haven't tried before.
In a review of Interzone 212, SF Signal says:
"...212 is chock full of stories. The standouts being: 'Feelings of the Flesh' by Douglas Elliot Cohen (a unique story with creature who can steal a person's senses), 'Ack-Ack Macaque' by Gareth Lyn Powell (about an underground comic character that becomes very powerful), and 'The Algorithm' by Tim Akers (a clockpunk story where God is of the machine, the best of the issue)."
Rudy Rucker joins the likes of Cory Doctrow, Charles Stross and Jason Stoddard, by making the entire text of his latest novel Postsingular available online as a free download.
A few months ago, I published a list of my favourite short story collections and a list of my favourite individual short stories. And now, I present a list of my favourite SF novels, in the hope that these three posts will go some way to answering the question: "which SF writers have most influenced your work?"
Peter Tennant reviews Fiction #4 on the Whispers of Wickedness website. He has some issues with my story A Necklace of Ivy, but describes it as:
"... beautifully written and keenly felt, the tale of two lovers wandering in a landscape blighted by an alien plague and dodging the military..."
It's been a busy few weeks, with three new stories published almost simultaneously. For the sake of convenience, here's a roundup of links:
Plus links to older stories here:
The October issue of Byzarium is now online, containing my brand new short story Pod Dreams of Tuckertown.
Fiction Issue 4 is now available for download as a free pdf file. It contains my short story A Necklace of Ivy.
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