An appropriate title for today, in some respects; after a few weeks of very passable sunny (though brisk) weather, Velcro City is once again drowsing beneath a sky the same dull grey as pre-dotcom computer hardware, the pavements slick with a noncommittal rain that suggests even the elements can’t be bothered to do anything properly today – bank holiday Friday, innit, mush?

Appropriate or not, it seems I never FPB’d any of the shots from the Mono show^[1] I caught the other week, so here you go:

Great band (as suggested by the liberal deployment of Fender Jazzmaster guitars, among other things). Good music for cold dismal weather, too.

Of course, if I was at Eastercon with the great and the good (and the weird) of British science fiction, I wouldn’t give a monkey’s about the weather. But I’m not, so I do. Selah.

About that service interruption

So, yeah, last week. To cut a long story short: my girlfriend finished with me. She had some justification for being upset with me; whether her response was proportional to the issue in question given the prevailing circumstances of her life is something only she can judge. I’m gutted, but I’m getting on with stuff. Life’s too bloody busy to sit around and mope; I neither need nor deserve pity.

That’s about it.

Album of the week

Suitably enough, the best album I’ve heard in the last few weeks has been Mono’s Hymn To the Immortal Wind. Go buy it.

Writing about books

In a shock turn of events, I’m well behind on review writing – I need to get finished on Reading Science Fiction (eds. James Gunn et al), but that should be in some respects less challenging than a fiction review, given that it’s supposed to be criticism of criticism. Then again, I may prove to be fooling myself there. We’ll see.

I still haven’t reviewed Cyberabad Days, either, which is second on the priority stack. And last night I finished reading Chris Beckett’s Marcher, so I need to do a reading journal entry for that as well. If you want to read a thorough review of Marcher by someone better qualified, Niall’s Strange Horizons piece is the one you need.

Futurismic

It’s business as usual at the world’s foremost near-future science fiction webzine… at least as far as content rolling out of the door is concerned, anyway. I have a big list of emails that need to be sent regarding new fiction purchases for the coming months, and it’s high time I got them done.

In other news, I’m in the process of roping in a new columnist to the team, which looks like it may work out pretty well. It’ll be good to have another new voice on board. Now, have you read Tim Pratt’s story for this month yet? No? Well, get to it – it’s short but fun.

Freelance

It’s all go in on the business side of life at the moment, largely thanks to me dropping the metaphorical balls of productivity last week and scrabbling to get them airborne again. This is the major upside of not being at Eastercon, namely having a whole long weekend to get myself back up to speed (and to schedule) with a bunch of different projects and tasks. Which should, in turn, distract me from thinking about how much I’d rather be at Eastercon.^[2]

Plenty of other interesting stuff on the horizon, too. Myself and Adam Wintle of Mallmus Media are putting together a two-prong pitch for a fairly prestigious local project, which will be a lot of fun to do if we land it. We’ve also been swapping experiences with different CMS packages and hosting options, and I’m now pretty much convinced that it’s time to rent myself a proper VPS or dedicated server and stop pissing around with huckster hosting companies. Which means all I have to do is choose a good vendor and learn how to do command line sysadmin tasks… anyone got any Modafinil?

But hey, I’m busy, and there’s work in the inbox. That’s something to be grateful for.

Aeroplane Attack

So, it’s our first gig in just over a fortnight, which is pretty cool. We’re pretty confident that we’ve got our set sorted and rehearsed; now all there is to worry about are the logistical challenges of crowbarring a five-piece band who have four half-stack amps and a drum kit between them into the limited space available in the actual venue… well, that and selling more tickets, of course.

But hey, you can help with the latter by buying one yourself over the magical tubes of the intermuhwebs! Three quid for three bands, one of which is a frighteningly loud reincarnation of the fuzzy melodics of nineties grunge, shoegazer and alt-rock? That’s a bargain right there, so buy one right now.

Go on.

Books and magazines seen

No fresh books in the last few weeks (or rather “no books in which I’m interested and haven’t yet already seen a different edition or binding of”), but the turn of the season means that the quarterly poetry mags are starting to arrive. So far we’ve had Obsessed With Pipework and the newly redesigned Iota… if the latter’s content has improved as much as its outer appearance, it’s going to be a real contender.

Coda

So, not the most gripping of FPBs, but what can I say – that’s just the way it works out sometimes, y’know? Anyway, you’re probably either at Eastercon or doing something else to enjoy the long weekend, and I’ve got stuff to do, so I’ll play the hand of mercy and shut the hell up. Have fun doing whatever it is you’re doing, and take care of yourselves. Hasta luego.

[ ¹ - Like many venues nowadays, Digital uses those horrible light cans that have LEDs instead of incandescent bulbs. Great for the environment (and cheaper in the long run), but they make getting a decent shot of a live band with a cheap camera a virtual impossibility. Meh. Mono look good a bit blurred, anyhow. ]

[ ² - Yeah, like that's gonna work. ]

We return to the original meaning of FPB because hey, look – one of my cacti has started to flower!

Looks like it’s the only one that will do so this year (my Christmas cacti haven’t even hinted at a late budding, worse luck), but one is better than none.

The weird bit is that this particular cactus is the one that has suffered the most from being knocked over and generally battered by bad circumstance, and came to me after having been sat in a Fratton garden for an entire British winter … the bad-boy just keeps on ticking. Respect, innit?

A bonus photo for those of you of the opinion that plants aren’t a sufficiently manly subject (even spiny phallic plants): here’s my growing collection of sound-mangling boxes through which I run my guitar.

I think the collection should cease growing for now, because the overdraft has suffered terribly. That said, I still need a delay pedal … hmmm.

Eastercon

So, if you’re wondering “why no pictures from Eastercon?”, the answer is simple – I just didn’t take any. I was far too busy watching or appearing on panels and hanging out with great people, and I’m afraid I don’t feel a jot guilty*.

Even listing just the highlights of the weekend would take a considerable amount of time, but it would be remiss to not mention:

• celebrating The Friday Curry with the Third Row Fandom crew, plus Shaun C Green and Paul “twice Hugo nominee for a Doctor Who script” Cornell
• China Mieville’s staggeringly good Guest of Honour speech
• Neil Gaiman’s relentless aura of nice-blokeness
• the Friday Flash Fiction workshop, and meeting all my fellow Fictioneers
• the embarrassing yet hilarious Sex & The Singularity panel
• Ian Sales falling off a chair
• Ian Watson telling me a story about kidney stones that will stay with me for life
• drinking, talking and getting lost in hallucinogenically similar corridors

Great stuff – many thanks to everyone who helped make it such a great event, both those I met and those I didn’t.

Writing about music

The Dreaded Press rolls on, with a bit of a gap for the bank holiday weekend. No live reviews or interviews lately, though I’m off to do one of each with Brit rockers Brigade this very evening.

The inward flow of albums has seemingly levelled out at a pace I can stay on top of without too much panic, and I’m gradually integrating TDP tasks into my daily regime.

I was very chuffed to find I got a link-back from Wikipedia for my review of the spectacular album Board Up The House by Genghis Tron – Wikipedia links give great SEO justice, and they’re like gold dust in the early stages of a site’s life.

Hopefully that’ll nudge me up a PageRank next time the updates go through.

Writing about books

As I explained at great length to a few people at Eastercon, the final phases of Book Of The New Sun became progressively more infuriating to read.

The biblical mirroring is a lot easier to stomach in the earlier stages, but the fourth book cranks the proselytising up to eleven without the benefit of the story moving well to keep it interesting.

Still not completely finished, but once I’m done I’ll not run short of things to say in the review, that’s for certain.

Meanwhile, roaring my way through the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Vol. 2, which isn’t a bad selection at all, from my perspective.

For those who’ve read it already, I can say that I’m about two thirds through, and my favourite piece (as well as the one that has stuck with me constantly since reading it) is the shortest one.

The book needs to be finished and reviewed with the pending batch of print reviews for Interzone – by the end of this week, in other words.

I loves me a good deadline, I does.

Futurismic

I’ve got the next new piece of fiction for Futurismic in hand, ready to be polished and unleashed next week. I’ve also got a second non-fiction piece ready to roll, a one-shot guest column in the pipeline and a potential new columnist in the offing as well; all great news there.

What’s not so great is that it’s high time I started going through the old posts that were created on the previous CMS and adding tags to them. One of those “a little bit every day” jobs, I guess – you have to take the rough with the smooth in this publishing business, y’know.

Other freelance type stuff

Waiting on some details and confirmations, but there could be some great news in the pipeline in this respect. Watch this space.

Books and magazines seen

Well that’s it, I’m officially baffled. April’s F&SF has arrived, after I’ve ignored any number of renewal slips.

I think maybe their database has me down as a life subscriber or something, becasue I’m positive my sub must be over by now. Still, free fiction isn’t something to complain about. *shrug*

Nice apocalyptic cover, BTW:

No books have come in the post, but it would be churlish not to mention the titles I picked up at Eastercon**. I came away with:

• A Good Old-fashioned Future – Bruce Sterling (short story collection; I have most of these titles in other volumes, but I seem to be veering toward the idea of becoming a Sterling completist. Fanboy is as fanboy does, I guess.)
• Deconstructing The Starships – Gwyneth Jones (Cons are a great place to buy critical works, because you’ll rarely find them cheaper, even second hand. This has been recommended to me often, so I’m pleased to have a shiny new copy of my own for the bargain price of £11)
• Tourniquet – Kim Lakin-Smith (by the much-better-looking other half of the BSFA webmaster … )
• Roadside Picnic – Strugatsky Brothers (keep hearing people bigging this book up, and there it was in old-school paperback for just £1 …)
• Appleseed - John Clute (a novel by the critical legend, highly recommended by Shaun)

ILLUMINATIONS

Still pig-in-mud happy about the Friday Flash anthology. My mother’s copy arrived by post at her house yesterday, so she phoned me and squee’d a bit, which was a lovely moment.

I still have hard-copy versions available and will gladly sign them for purchasers; don’t forget you can get the PDF version for a donation of your choice at the Odd Two Out website. I can’t sign those, though, and they’re just not as totemic …

Coda

Well, that’s more than enough blather to make up for a missing week, I think. And anyway, I’d best get on – I need to grab and eat The Friday Curry (regrettably minus the Third Row gang and other fandom types this time) before trundling off to The Pyramids to do this interview.

And so with little extra ceremony I shall bid you all a good weekend – hasta luego, amigos.

[ * The absence of last week's FPB should make it plain that I didn't make much use of the laptop either. As it happens, I'm going to sell the thing and swap it for an Asus Eee, so if you're in the market for a laptop with a decent spec and one careful owner, give me a shout. ]

[ ** I'm actually rather proud of my restraint - as anyone who's been can attest, the Dealer's Room at a con is like a finely tuned machine for extracting money from sf/f fans. ]

So, I was at Orbital 2008 all this weekend, over which I managed to have lots of fun and hang out with lots of cool people.

However, most other people will probably remember my presence best for moderating the soon-to-be-infamous “Sex and the Singularity” panel at midday today, which ended up being as degenerate as you might have imagined. Here’s me sat next to Charlie Stross in full pontificatory flow:

Charlie Stross on Singularity

[Image by mesmerising.]

Charlie is doubtless explaining a tangential point regarding a certain hippo parasite which you will remember if you were present. If you weren’t there, trust me – you don’t want to hear it.

I may possibly talk more about Eastercon when I am less exhausted. Suffice to say I had a great time. Fandom FTW.

Well, I’m not quite ready, to be truthful – but when am I ever?

But readiness be damned – it’s Easter weekend, and I’m off to Orbital in the wee small hours of tomorrow morning for a weekend of geeking the hell out about science fiction. wh00t! [image by jurvetson]

After last year’s shortcomings, I’m not going to make any promises about regular liveblogging that I can’t keep. But I shall attempt a few updates from the scene regardless, and those of you who’re hip to the stuff all the cool kids are doing can follow me on Twitter, if you use it or have an RSS reader.

A major feature of the weekend for me will obviously be the formal launch of ILLUMINATIONS, which will be (I hope) a proud moment.

In the interim, I should point out that copies of ILLUMINATIONS in both print and digital form can be ordered from the Odd Two Out website rightfreakingnow – the print edition is GB£6.99, and the PDF digital copy is yours for an unspecified amount, though we suggest GB£2 as a nice child-saving donation size.

Of course, digital copies and print copies of ILLUMINATIONS bought from the website won’t come personally autographed by the rakishly handsome editor, will they, eh?

Eastercon means there probably won’t be any Friday Flash from me tomorrow, so apologies in advance if you’re looking forward to it. That said, we may get something out of the workshop we’re running, so never say never.

There will be an FPB … but it will likely be brief, as it’s going to be hard enough sparing the time to do the free fiction round-up at Futurismic. And the rumour is there’ll be a mass celebration of The Friday Curry involving a hefty chunk of the Third Row Fandom crew.

My crazy rock’n'roll lifestyle, eh?

See you at Eastercon if you’re going. Otherwise, adios amigos!

As Eastercon is this weekend, I thought I’d do my bit for “paying it forward” and assemble a glossary of terms for the convention newbie.

It can all seem a bit much on your first visit to a con; these are the basic salient points I’ve picked up in the few short years I’ve been attending them.

Alcohol – popular/quasi-ubiquitous social lubricant.

Ale, Real – subspecies of Alcohol. Deceptively powerful; tread lightly if inexperienced.

Badges – everyone gets one, signifies membership of the con. Initial Newbie feelings of foolishness over wearing what may seem to be a glorified name-tag soon evaporate once you’ve had some Alcohol and forgotten the name of the new friend you’re currently talking to.

Bar – if you’re meant to meet someone but you can’t remember where, there is a good place to look. Even if they’re not there, Alcohol will be; also high incidences of Rambling Conversation/Arguments.

Committee – the foolhardy brave and hard-working people who volunteered to create, organise and run the con. If you [are introduced to]/[stumble over] a member of the Committee, thank them effusively and buy them a drink. They will invariably deserve it.

Dealer’s Room – initially populated by people who will be slightly disconsolate about having shelled out a lot of money for an insufficient space, but who over the course of four days will become immensely happy at having emptied your pockets and their boxes of stock simultaneously. Some con-goers have claimed it is possible to attend a con and not buy anything from the Dealer’s Room; no one believes these people.

Drinking Game – a game that involves drinking. May be connected (however loosely) to sf-nal themes, e.g. Blake’s Seven drinking game, wherein (allegedly) one has to keep drinking until the program becomes watchable; this is essentially a race against the clock, as the bar will have to close at some point.

Ellison, Doing An – committing behaviour with which most people cannot get away with, and which those who can almost certainly shouldn’t. Basically – if they’re not your own, don’t touch them without being asked.

Fen – plural of fan; also a regional geographical feature of Norfolk.

Filk – discovering too much about this early on could quite possibly put you off cons forever, or make you an instant convert. Your mileage may vary. This phenomena is statistically likely to intersect with Hair, Facial.

Gopher – there can never be too many of these; see Volunteering.

Guests of Honour – famous people whose names you’ve seen on book spines and television credit rolls. Will appear on Panels and at other events … sometimes the Bar, also.

Hair, Facial – very popular among older male Fen; comes in a sometimes astonishing variety of styles and colours.

Internet – increasingly popular and useful consensual hallucination, used in the planning and running of (and waffling about) cons and – probably, thanks to free wi-fi this year – in the settling/termination of Rambling Conversation/Arguments.

Jokes – omnipresent, multilayered, sometimes inexplicable even to their creators. Just laugh anyway; it’s good for your health.

Keys, Room – losing these is not recommended. However, acquiring someone else’s may be considered a great success in the right circumstances.

Lecture, George Hay Memorial – lecture given by a genuine science-y type person on a (usually) genuine science-y type subject. Generally very interesting, though this year there is another event occurring at the same time that you may wish to consider attending instead. Ahem.

Literature Stream – Panels and events about books and stuff.

Masquerade – in no other event will you find such vast potential for simultaneous horror, humour and spectacle … excepting possibly the sort of events where unusual mushrooms are popular.

Media Stream – Panels and events about telly and stuff.

Newbie, Being A – not something to worry about, although it may all seem a bit much at first. Syndrome curable by Volunteering … and/or joining in with a Rambling Conversation/Argument.

Ops – The emergent controlling sentience-nexus of the con, and a place to head if you need help. The people here may well be stressed, so be nice to them. The people here may be Smofs, so be nice to them. The place to go for Badges and Volunteering.

Panels – talking-head type events with an informal talk-show/debate structure. Not to be mistaken for Rambling Conversation/Arguments (although may devolve into one, and quite possibly emerged from one that occurred the year before).

Quizzes – often based loosely around popular Radio 2 formats with an sf-nal theme. Warning: some Rambling Conversation/Arguments may [emerge from]/[be mistaken for] Quizzes; some Quizzes may [emerge from]/[be mistaken for] Rambling Conversation/Arguments.

Rambling Conversation/Argument – could be about anything, though sf-nal topics dominate statistically. Almost as omnipresent as Alcohol; some scholars suggest a locational correlation in these phenomena, but rarely stay focused on their research for long.

Room Party – much like any other party, only taking place inside a con hotel room; Scandinavian variety noted as being particularly legendary.

Seven, Blake’s – seriously, why?

Smofs – you may see one of these, or even a number at once, but you’ll never be sure. Not to be confused with the little blue guys with white hats … unless you’ve been to a Scandinavian Room Party.

Third Row Fandom – is watching you masturbate.

Turbulence – Met Office predicting lots of it in the Heathrow air traffic region; possibly in connection with large pockets of hot air generated by Orbital panellists and/or Rambling Conversation/Arguments.

Underwear – be sure to take sufficient for the whole weekend. Unless you never wear any, of course.

V – UK sf TV show whose retrospective popularity, though strange, is infinitely more explicable than that of Blake’s Seven.

Volunteering – there’s a lot of organising, lifting’n’shifting, child wrangling and fetch’n'carry work to be done at a con; why not pitch in and help by becoming a Gopher? Great way to meet other Fen (and sometimes Guests of Honour) and make Smofs happy.

Who, Doctor – the scheduling is not fortuitous this year, much to the disappointment of the Media Stream. Buying Paul Cornell enough drinks might lead to impromptu plot-point denouements, however. Or something equally funny. 

Xenu – this really isn’t our fault at all; don’t let journalists tell you otherwise.

Yeti – appearance of genuine cryptozoologicals in the Heathrow region is highly improbable; be sure to double-check (politely) that you haven’t in fact spotted an example of Hair, Facial – especially if you have been consuming Alcohol in the vicinity of Filk.

Zaphod Beeblebear – you’ll know it when you see it.

[ Please note that the author will not be held legally or ethically responsible for any social faux pas committed as a result of reading this document, and that if you find yourself being offended by anything contained within it, it's almost certainly meant as a joke.

Except the Blake's Seven stuff. That really is rubbish, I'm afraid. ]

Jonathan’s right; you could (and should) laugh. Continue reading “Eastercon Monday: the nature of promises unkept”

Managed to actually get up early enough to force coffee down my neck and head to the BSFA novel award taster reading panel … Continue reading “Eastercon Saturday: BSFA Novel Award taster reading and more”

Didn’t get much done yesterday, blogging-wise, eh? Continue reading “Decaying aspirations of professionalism”

An environment that I’m rather familiar with, after all. Just having a beer to quelch my first-time moderator nerves, having a chat with Sandy Auden (my reviews editor at Interzone), and contemplating a last minute cigarette before heading off to the Green Room to meet the panel. Whatever happens, this will certainly be a experience! Dissection later on …

Looks like my first stint as a panel moderator will be rather more challenging than I expected. Let’s see …

First Jetse came out in defence of short reviews.

Then Niall took him to task for it (and generated a, shall we say, lively comments thread).

Then Jonathan put in his two pence (generating another busy comments thread that includes a visit from ((a possibly justifiably irate)) Andy Cox).

Meanwhile, Gabe sits tight on the other side of the Atlantic, wishing for an opportunity to deploy his critic-fu mad rant sk1llz, and A. R. Yngve certainly has reviews on his mind (although I’m not sure if he’s coming to the con or not).

And there was me thinking this was a topic hardly anyone would care about. I’m not known for my leadership abilities, so this may end up as an exercise in herding cats … metaphorically angry cats, with metaphorical guns.

Still, life’s a learning curve, isn’t it? Updating from a little after midday Friday (public transport permitting); until then, hasta luego, amigos.