So, the Clarke Award ceremony was the opening event of the Sci-Fi London film festival, which is why we had Darth Vader and an assortment of other Star Wars cosplay types hanging around as we made busy with chicken-on-a-stick and alarmingly strong (free) Russian lager:

Jokes were, naturally, plentiful.

‘Twas a fine night out, as I have mentioned already; when the podcast featuring myself and the good Professor Roberts being interviewed by Graham Sleight emerges, I’ll give it a listen and link to it provided I don’t sound too gormless.*

Writing about music

The Dreaded Press rattles on; CDs continue to arrive, reviews continue to be written. Every time I think I’ve managed to get well ahead of schedule something happens to knock me back again. It’s kinda Sisyphean … just with albums, and not a big stone.**

Album of the week

Another week with two strong contenders. HORSE the Band come very close with the Nintendo/metalcore mash-up of A Natural Death, but the prize goes to the fuzzy lo-fi LA pop of Nouns by No Age.

Writing about books

Hahhhahhahhahhha! Hah ha ha. Er.

So – none, then.

I know it’s a familiar refrain, but I’m scheduled to finish some reviews this weekend; the extra length of said weekend should hopefully make it more probable that I do so.

Freelance

Things are gearing up to cruise velocity for me with PS Publishing, which is good. There’s a lot to take in, and it’ll be a while before the routines settle for me, but I’m pretty confident I can get things running smoothly and then work on enhancements before too long. So, yay me!

Y’all are subscribed to the PS Newsroom feed, right? Of course you are!

Next on the agenda will be contacting my individual clients and working out the minutia of our working relationships … in other words, doing our best to minimise paperwork and other tedium on both sides. It’s all fun and games, this freelance stuff, y’know.

Books and magazines seen

The latest Obsessed With Pipework magazine arrived this week, as regular as the turn of the seasons. For high-quality home-grown contemporary poetry without the excess of middle-class angst and handwringing that can plague the form, this should be your first stop.

One fiction title, but it’s not genre – the Little Brown people*** have purloined my address from the Orbit gang and sent me James Miller’s Lost Boys. It looks intriguing, but I doubt I’ll find time for it any time soon.

And one non-fiction title from Prometheus Books: The Coming Convergence by Stanley Schmidt, which looks like it could be pretty interesting.

Again, the time caveat applies here, but I’m considering farming out Futurismic reviews to other people … if you’re interested, please drop me a line.

Out and about

Another literary engagement appears on the calendar next week in the form of a symposium at Gresham College featuring none other than Neal Stephenson as keynote speaker – “Science fiction as a literary genre”.

They’ve sent out proper paper invitations and everything! This promises to be a super day out in the Big Smoke, and a nice preliminary to the getting-ever-closer Masterclass2.0. Genre lit-crit FTW!

Mobile computing corner

So, I just have to take this opportunity to say how awesome my new Asus Eee PC is.

It’s totally freaking awesome.

It does everything I’ve ever needed a laptop to do, and is no bigger or heavier than a hardback book; it has no moving internal parts, and can thus survive being toted in a normal bag.

It’s small, it’s black, it’s pimped out with extra RAM and it’s running Ubuntu. I’m likely to go on about it for weeks to come, frankly. This is what mobile computing is all about … and seeing as how I can read PDF files on there quite easily, I think I’ve found my ebook solution.

So you can shove your iPhone in your pipe and smoke it, frankly … I sure hope that proprietary operating system tastes nice!

Oh, and if you’re thinking of getting one yourself, EfficientPC is the place to go for one all tricked out to your personal specifications. Good personal service and prices from a small ethical company. Recommended! I’ll be getting my next desktop from them too, I reckon.

Coda

Seven days done, yet again. This relentless acceleration shows little sign of abating, but that’s all good. To use an athletic metaphor, I think I’m getting past that pain barrier that running enthusiasts talk about – settling into my stride, as it were.

On the subject of athletics, though, some advice would be appreciated. By way of explanation, a snippet of dialogue between myself and Amiable Drunkard From Downstairs:

Me: Hey, man.

ADFD: Awroit, me old … gor, int you put on weight since you stopped smokin’, mush!

Me: Ha ha. Yes. THANKS, then.

Now, this coming from a man who is hard pressed to notice when he’s left the building without remembering to put a shirt on in the middle of winter suggests that my fears are quite correct – quitting smoking has lowed my metabolism, and I’m gathering some extra around the middle at a frightening rate.

I don’t eat badly; I cook for myself a lot, don’t eat a lot of meat, rarely get a takeaway more than once a week. My diet is not a problem (though I might want to look at aiming for smaller portions). No – what I have to face is that it’s time for me to get a proper exercise regime.

This is, quite frankly, a horrifying thought.

For an assortment of reasons (mostly psycho-social) I am pathologically allergic to all team and/or competition sports, and the thought of going to a gym is utterly repulsive. This narrows my options considerably.

So, what can I do? Your suggestions would be appreciated. Running doesn’t appeal, because it’s a dull thing to do in a city and takes too much time. Comments from Gareth P have made me consider swimming – something I was lucky enough to do a lot of as a child, thanks to living overseas in a hot country – but there must be more options. Please share!

Of course, the cessation of a certain weekly tradition would probably help curb my weight-gain, but as I said earlier in the year I’m not becoming a puritan. If I can’t balance eating food I enjoy with staying fairly healthy, then I’m afraid I’m going to opt for just becoming a fat bastard. I remain convinced, however, that compromise is more than possible.

And it is in that spirit of gastronomic endeavour that I shall venture forth to fetch the afore-mentioned Friday Curry Of Justice. Though I might ask them if they can make it a little drier than usual … every little helps, I guess.

So, have a good long weekend, folks – hasta luego!

[ * So, don't hold your breath. ]

[ ** I'm not immortal, either. But other than that, the similarities are uncanny. ]

[ *** How imperialist does that sound? lol ]

Good winnings:

As the entire intarwubz have already reported, Richard Morgan’s Black Man scooped the Clarke Award last night. I hadn’t read the whole shortlist, so I can’t pass comment on its comparative worthiness, but I have read Black Man (reviewed it for Vector, too) and thought it was an excellent book, so no complaints from me.

The fact that Morgan is not just a very decent and interesting fellow but one of my new clients is also rather pleasing. Congratulations, Richard!

The ceremony was a lot of fun, and the Apollo Cinema was done up all sf-nal complete with gratuitous Star Wars extras; it was great to see lots of people I usually only interact with online, and an unusual experience to be plied with free booze and nibbles.

Although, judging by Niall’s picture of me stood next to the gorgeous Claire Weaver, I should probably be avoiding nibbles for a few months, or possibly even forever.

Bad endings:

The SF Signal gang roped me into another of their Mind Meld posts to talk about the best and worst endings in genre novels.

Unsurprisingly, I was far from being the only person to declare Peter F Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy to have the worst ending ever … there’s lots of other interesting opinions from names and faces old and new, so go take a read. You’ll get some good recommendations from it, I reckon.

Bad reviews:

Andrew Wheeler calls it how he sees it, which is why he’s one of the genre bloggers I most respect. His justification for writing negative reviews is chuntering out of my printer as we speak, so as to be pinned to my wall:

“On the one side, a reviewer always wants to be honest. If I liked a book, I want to say that — more, I want to explain what I liked about it, and, as best I can, how, I liked it. And I want to avoid soft pedaling a book I didn’t like.

But I’ve also gotten to a point in my life when I like to think of myself as an adult. And adults don’t cause offense inadvertently (as someone once said about gentlemen).

I’ll still probably say some critical things about the book in question [...] but, if I can manage it, none of it will be gratuitous (unlike SF Eye), and all of it will be for a purpose.

So that’s the point: I complain because I love. Really.”

Selah, brother.

Bad business:

Right, it’s off to the day-job for me … *sigh*

As mentioned in FPB last week, tonight is the Arthur C Clarke Award ceremony up in the Big Smoke, and your loyal correspondent from the Styx is getting on the train in a few hours to hob-nob with the worthies of the science fiction literature scene.

To the right is a picture of M John Harrison receiving last year’s award for the inimitable and excellent Nova Swing [image by abrinsky]. Who’ll take the trophy this year? There’s only one certainty with the Clarke Award, which is that whoever wins there will be some degree of controversy about it … the good Mr Harrison being the exception that proves the rule, of course.

So, yours truly will be on the scene, a-Twitterin‘ anything of note. As there’s only the one award, that probably won’t be a great deal; I think I’ll be too busy chatting with people (and showing off my awesome new Asus Eee) at the drinks afterwards to do any heavy reportage. That said, I’ll try to get some decent photos of various people … bodyguards permitting, naturally.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, the Orbit books gang are celebrating the Award and lamenting the passing of its founder by giving away a hardback edition of Arthur C Clarke’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. You gotta be in it to win it, as the saying goes.

***

Today is also notable for a much bigger reason (or at least one that more people beyond the boundaries of the sf echo-chamber will care about) – the World Wide Web is fifteen years old today.

It’s ess than half my age, and yet I already spend more than half my time using it – there’s a scary thought for ya.

It doesn’t appear to have made it onto the official website yet, but the BSFA forums have the shortlist for this year’s Clarke Awards:

• The Red Men – Matthew de Abaitua (Snow Books)
• The H-Bomb Girl – Stephen Baxter (Faber & Faber)
• The Carhullan Army – Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber)
• The Raw Shark Texts – Steven Hall (Canongate)
• The Execution Channel – Ken MacLeod — (Orbit)
• Black Man – Richard Morgan (Gollancz)

Your yearly instalment of controversy starts here!

I’m thinking of starting a shadow award that works off of the Clarke, wherein there is a prize for the book that everyone thought was a shortlist shoo-in, and another prize for the book whose presence on the shortlist no one can understand. Now accepting nominations!