Nuff said. Shit on TV and I've nearly watched all the DVDs in the house six times over. Tonight's pick will be Dog Soldiers.

The book mark function on my browser isn't working, and I don't have time for debugging at the minute. So this is a partly a reference I can come back to. We have:

Terry Jones advising the US on the cost of war over at the Guardian

Ursula Le Guin talking about fantasy and children's literature over at the New Statesman

And the Mary Sue Project here

Survived xmas - saw twenty plus relatives in two days; survived the drive back. Now sitting in my dressing gown at midday, assessing the chaos of the household and wondering how on earth I'm going to dress this old house up to sell for the maximum possible amount (time to jump on the good ole' capitalist carosuel). This calls for a New Year's Resolution:

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Watch more TV. Get your resolution here.

Right, that's one thing sorted for 2007. More TV it is.

"From the towers of the corporate castellum - scraping the sky like the chrome-coloured nails of a whore - it was possible to gaze steeply down on to the squat mechanistic shapes of the city's clubs and malls. They crouched inside the boundary of the outer ramparts, just close enough to the outside to taste the sewage and campfire stench of the barrio."

Thunder Road - Issue 10 of Neometropolis.


This one was inspired by Mad Max, William Gibson, Bruce Springsteen, and too much Greek mythology. Soundtrack by The White Stripes.

Happy Xmas, one and all! See you in the New Year. Remember kids, the future is now!

I was going to summarize my writing achievements for the year but currently feeling tired and apathetic. The achievements have been many.. I'll come back and do this later, nearer the 31st when it will feel more appropriate,

Suffice to say I am still here, consuming the signal.

Good night and good luck

Still chipping away at the my alternative career ... no, not the one with the gimp outfit, the other alternative career.

This time around it's a short story in The Hub. I'm especially happy about this one. We have this writing group, in a pub, and from this one insane ... sorry, I meant dedicated ... member has launched an SF magazine. (I mean, that's how Interzone got started right? Guys sat around in a pub bitching about what was wrong with the SF magazine scene and what they would do, until one of them got of his arse and did it). What's more, we're having a launch party. It's the first launch party I've ever been to. I'm looking foward to it, it's a better reason to get lashed than christmas.

I have a story in it, another friend had a story in it, some fine people I don't know sent in submissions and they have a story in. My friends  God's Favourite Stepson and Alasdair5000 have put in a lot of hard work.

And what I really want to happen if for The Hub to be here in a year's time. Hell, I want it to be here in ten years time. I want to be at the start of something new, something big and bold, that punches a huge, fat, mark all over British SF. Raises the bar for everyone else out there who is writing and publishing short science fiction.

And the best way for that to happen is for you guys and girls to go out there and buy a copy. If you like what you see, or happen to be loaded, buy a subscription.

Did I tell you about the launch party?

This is what I want part of the future to be - along with lightsabers and trips to Mars - cheap, free energy, and engineering solutions with multiple benefits. Can you see it - some desert on the African coast, creating electricity to seel to Europe with no pollution, while underneath the solar panel farm deslalinated water is used to grow crops:  See Guardian News 27th Nov

Of course, we are too busy fucking our world over and we spend our energy on something that could be called The Neuromancer Architectural Award. (But hey, we'll have some cool looking buildings while the world burns down around us - just remember the mirrorshades!)

And finally, my own contrubution, because I've just seen the 1st epidode of the new Dr Who (Rose). I'm behind the times. *shrugs*

Before it arrives, there is a prelude; a sense of atmospheric change akin to the pressure front pushed ahead of Tube trains, reeking of dirt and grease, stale things and dead things and things best left untouched. Then there comes the wheezy rasp, like a geriatric machine in pain.

            You know, then, that is something that has seen too much, born witness one to many times. It has a miasma, a taint. You cannot travel into the Abyss without bringing back some of the Abyss with you.

            But those thoughts are blown away in the flash of blue light, so bright that you think an atom bomb has just detonated. Standing there, blinking, shading your eyes and checking your sense of sight to make sure your retinas haven't been burnt out, you think that maybe you were wrong about the Abyss.

            It's just a police box. A blue police box from the 1950s.

            Then you ask what? Why? How? Who?


Cheesy I know, and needs some work.

This is the Science Fiction Book Club's list of the fifty most significant science fiction/fantasy novels published between 1953 and 2002. Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert*
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin*
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson*
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett*
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester*
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21 Dragonflight by Anne McCaffery
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman*
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny*
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

A ton of books on there that I loved more and would prefer to see in the top 50 - Signs of Life by M. John Harrison, Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Desolation Road by Ian McDonald - just to name a few. But not a bad list at any road.

Some, like the Anne McCaffrey, I enjoyed when I read them, but would probably hate them now. I haven't reread Dune for years (thanks to boo boo kitty fuck for buying that for me one xmas) and I only read Lord of Light this year (it's a deeply brilliant book by the way).

Later

As captured by me mobile phone camera. I like it when grafitti gets more interesting than insults or declarations of (short-lived) undying love.

still here. just been very busy at work and at home.