For those of you who don’t follow Warren Ellis’s blog*, I’ll pass on the news that the redoubtable Norman Spinrad has decided to release his latest and as-yet-unpublished novel, Osama The Gun, as free-to-read sections online. [At time of posting, that link is giving a 503 error thanks to the inevitable Ellis-readership Zerg-rush, so bookmark it and try again later.]

Apparently, Spinrad believes that he can’t get the novel published because of its political content. That fact, combined with the title, is certainly enough to pique my interest.

I think the greatest grin-inducer of this story is the idea of a former SFWA president cheerfully putting his work up on Scribd …

[* Yes, I know, the body-mod posts can be a bit frightening, even to a body-modder of sorts, but still ...]

Great news via Big Dumb Object - the next Iain M. Banks novel is scheduled for release next February.

It’s set in the Culture (which was revealed a little while ago, IIRC), and will be called Matter (apparently just to annoy internet people, as that was the working title for Steep Approach to Garbadale).

According to BDO, the sample the man himself read out had all the usual IMB goodness we have come to expect. There’s a reason to look forward to the new year - as far as I’m concerned, the release of an Iain M. Banks novel should be treated as just cause for national holiday.

Banks holiday weekend, anyone?

OK, I’ll get my coat.

Over at Memepunks they posted about Bookcrossing, which is the kind of web-based thing that really floats my book-junky/library-staff boat. Continue reading “Bookcrossing: releasing books into the wild”