There’s always been some graffiti and randomness in Velcro City, but it seems that this year everything’s kicking up a notch. Lots of people doing weird new guerrilla stuff like this, for example:

The Free Art Friday meme is picking  up pace as well, with a number of people I know suddenly getting into making stuff and giving it away anonymously; it’s like street art in style (well, it can be, sometimes), but it’s made to be portable, not static, and its reappropriation by the public is not only assumed but desired. I love this sort of stuff, people breaking down barriers of participation and consumption, and the wall between artist and viewer, gallery and public space. If I had the time, I’d do more of it myself^[1].

Album of the Week

I’m gonna get all retro on your asses with AotW this time; Sub Pop have just released Enter The Vaselines, which is a deluxe repackaged version of 1992′s The Way Of The Vaselines, which in turn was a career retrospective that collected their two EPs and lone album recorded between 1986 and 1989. Kurt Cobain stimulated interest in this little-known Scottish indie-pop-proto-grunge band by covering “Molly’s Lips” and declaring them his favourite songwriters of all time; find out why, and indulge in a little bit of pop-cultural history. Quirky, faux-dumb clever and full of teenage sexual tension. A fascinating document (and a pleasant reminder of being fifteen, which is a rarity).

Writing about books

Well, I got the bulk of the This is Not a Game review done, and it’s now under the laser-eyes of Niall, who will doubtless point out some minor corrections and tweaks which will transform said review from the rambling thesis it is to something that people will actually be interested in reading.  The man has a talent, I tell yah.

Which leaves me with (I think) no standing deadlines on reviews… which theoretically means I have time to catch up on reading journal entries here^[2].

Currently reading the Clarke Award-winning Song of Time from Ian R MacLeod, and I have to say I’m more impressed than I expected to be; I’m about half way through and he’s still throwing in new levels of weirdness and estrangement to the story.

Freelance

Yep, still busy, still loads of balls in the air, none of which are close enough to completion to be worth mentioning separately. Hoping to get some of them nailed down into a final trajectory within the next couple of weeks.

The server is now up and running properly, locked up safe and secure from predatory Russian botnets and port-scanning scriptkids, serving DNS information and HTML and behaving like something close to usable. It’s been quite the learning curve, but well worth the time investment – I think it’ll pay off quite well over the course of a few years, in fact. Now it’s time to get a first few production/live sites up on there and see how she holds up to some traffic.

Futurismic

It’s been a good brisk week for Futurismic, traffic-wise and comments-wise, which is always good to see. I’ve also announced the forthcoming column by author and futurist Brenda Cooper; Today’s Tomorrows will be doing the same sort of thing that I do when I blog at Futurismic, but going into greater depth on single subjects. It’s going to be good, so come along for the ride, why don’tcha?

Aeroplane Attack

Little to report on this front; second gig is this coming Monday, we’ve got a practice session the night before, everyone’s feeling good about it. We’re trying not to think about the logistical nightmare of getting all our kit to the venue and back without being able to borrow a buddy with a van and a few spare hours…

Oh, and also: I can haz nu gitarr:

Nope; can’t play it well, can’t afford it, don’t deserve it. Don’t care, either; it’s a proper Gibson Les Paul Standard, and I’m currently very much in lust with it.

Books and magazines seen

None, nada, nil, zilch, zippo. I’ve been very good, too; I’ve passed the 50p bookstore in Albert Rodeo many times this week, and manfully resisted the siren song of old damp-bent Ace and DAW paperbacks lurking among Michael Crichton and Dan Brown titles…

Coda

That’s about your lot for this week; after last week’s barrage of excitement and big news, that’s probably a sign of the universe balancing itself, if only momentarily. More weirdness will doubtless arrive, sooner rather than later, but for now I’m going to get the day’s tasks done and head out for a beer. And as it’s been a good while since the last one, I might just go grab me a Friday Curry beforehand…

Have a good weekend, people. Hasta luego!

[ ¹ - Or, more likely, do a little of it and then blame it for not having the time to write fiction. Can't say I don't know my failings, right? ]

[ ² - Please note my use of the word "theoretically". ]

I have the same love/hate relationship with the country I live in as I have with Velcro City itself. On a day like today, with clear blues skies and a gentle breeze, I’m pleased to be sat here calmly, typing to the sound of traffic and birdsong with a long weekend approaching me; how could one find fault with England this afternoon?

Well, sometimes the bad things are literally too big to ignore:

Vermin and shysters; the BNP, only with better tailors and their mouths stuffed with plums. British-grown plums, of course. Wankers.

“Why worry about them,” people tell me. “No one takes them seriously.” Well, plenty of people take these seriously:

Graaaaaaaarrrrrgggghh.

Sorry, just needed to vent; it’s a common response to having left the building during the daytime. We now return you to our scheduled programmes.

Album of the week

One for the serious metal-heads this week: Daath are supposedly into Kabballah (the Hebrew mystical malarkey, rather than the wackadoo cult based upon it from which Madonna buys blessed mineral water) and all sorts of other stuff, but exactly how that affects their music I have no idea. Suffice to say that their new album The Concealers is that rarest of birds – a consistently powerful and heavy modern metal album with no filler and no gimmick-of-the-day. Go ahead, give your neck a workout.

Writing about books

The This is Not a Game review is half-written, as I managed to bash out one and a half thousand words on the train to London on Wednesday night. This is progress, not to mention the worst part of the process completed; now I just need to edit it up, supplement with quotes and digressions, polish and send. So, that’s an afternoon of the coming weekend taken care of…

Futurismic

Hey hey hey – it’s the first of May! Which is something to celebrate even if you disregard revitalised pagan festivals and political holidays spawned by a dying metanarrative, because it means there’s new fiction at Futurismic. This month I got to publish someone who lives little more than a stone’s throw away from me by comparison to our Stateside contributors; Stephen Gaskell’s “Under an Arctic Sky” is a geopolitical action-escape story done right, and you should go read it before leaving a comment to say what you thought of it. G’waaaaan.

PS Publishing

So, as most of you who’ll be interested will already know, I was up in the Big Smoke on Wednesday night, watching Ian R MacLeod take the 2009 Arthur C Clarke Award for Song of Time, a book published by PS Publishing, for whom I am contractor-publicist. It was quite a moment, and even more so for Pete and Nicky (and Ian, obviously) than myself. It’s a very prestigious title for a small press like PS to accrue, and for it to happen in the company’s tenth year of business seems fitting, somehow.

I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to work with people who care deeply about what they do. Seeing Pete’s face as the winner was read out has pretty much made my month.

Freelance

Work, work, work… there’s been a lot of catch-up this week as I recover from the setbacks of the beginning of April, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, I think. My server is up and running, and I’ve pretty much sussed the essential basics of running the thing, so now I can start using it properly as both a hosting and development environment. Some minor projects and tasks have been cleared off; some larger ones have mutated (mostly for the better), and a few more are looming on the horizon like braking supertankers. LIVING THE DREAM, YO.

[high-grade-geekery]I’ve finally abandoned all hope of learning to do anything with Drupal before the next ice age happens (if even that soon), and am defecting my loyalties to MODx, as recommended by good buddy Adam at Mallmus Media. In a nutshell, MODx looks to be a CMS that does everything all the others can do, but actually makes it possible for you to find all of the relevant options in one place without referring to a degree in database architectural philosophy that you don’t have. Plus it has a moderately revolutionary approach to theming and templates that fits much better with my personal design methodologies for larger projects… or, in other words, it makes more intuitive sense to me than the others I’ve tried before, and I think I’m going to enjoy development jobs much more as a result. Yay![/high-grade-geekery]

Aeroplane Attack

People tell us that our first gig went pretty well, despite some sound issues. The problem in a nutshell: the girl running the sound desk has never encountered a band who request that they not bother mic’ing up the amplifiers and simply run the kick, snare and vocals through the PA. End result: we didn’t sound quite right, but we still put in a decent showing and had a lot of fun. In case you were wondering how we sound, well, here’s a video recorded on a mobile phone. Horrible sound quality, but you’ll get an idea of where we’re coming from (and how loud we play); the tune is called “Song for Joseph”.

See? We don’t use the Vulcan bomber as our logo for nothing.

The next show is Monday 11th, and the sound guy will be someone we know a little better, so those debut issues should be sorted. We’re really looking forward to it; if you’re in the area, come along. I have tickets, if you’d like to buy one at the super-cheap advance rate of £2…

Books and magazines seen

No time for sourcing images today, but there’s a fresh hardback copy of China Mieville‘s The City & The City sat on my sofa alongside a trade paperback of Sean Williams‘ latest Astropolis novel, The Grand Conjunction.

A more unusual score comes in the form of How to Build Your Own Spaceship, a pop-sci book by Piers Bizony about “the science of personal space travel”, which the publisher was nice enough to send me after I emailed them about it[1]. Nice Jetsons vibe to the cover art:

Lovely. Now all I need is the time to read it…

Coda

Well, there you have it – it’s been a busy few weeks, but then I always say that, don’t I? But hey, the weekend’s here, and that’s got to be a good thing. I think I’ll wrap this up, finish the Futurismic free fiction round-up and spend a few well-earned hours sat on my arse with my nose in a book… I hope you find something nice to do as well. Laters!

[ 1 - And many thanks to the man DT for the tip-off on that one, too. ]

Yes indeed; the tables are turned on me as Charles Tan of Bibliophile Stalker puts me to the question, primarily about stuff I do in the genre fiction world but veering off into other stuff as well. Reading it may make you understand why I tend towards reticence around new acquaintances; I’ve seen the looks on faces when I just open up and waffle at full bore. As such, replying to Charles’ questions was a lot of fun.

It also took me around three hours. What can I say? I type slowly.

Briefly donning the meta-hat of intellectual narcissism, it’s interesting to see that snap-shot of my mind, taken as it was right at the end of last year, before I’d made the decision to go freelance full time. So many things have changed in just four fast months. Time flies when you’re living the dream, AMIRITE?

… but we have them anyway. Because since when did “need” enter into the rock’n'roll equation, eh? Behold!

Our drumber[sic] made up the logo, which we’re all rather chuffed with. Aircraft buffs will note that the plane depicted is a Vulcan bomber. Ever heard one of those take off nearby, say, at an airshow or something?

Well, know you know what Aeroplane Attack sound like. We’re playing our first gig tomorrow night. I am, to coin a phrase, kinda bricking it. But it’s going to a lot of fun – please come by if you’re in Velcro City for Saturday evening.

Writing about music

Shockingly behind this week for various reasons, but TDP is still ticking over pretty much daily.

Album of the week

This will surprise (and quite possibly appall) a few readers, but I’m going to plump for Shallow Life by Italian goth-metal-popsters Lacuna Coil. Oh yes, it’s cheesy as hell and totally overproduced, not to mention lacking any vibe of authenticity. But by hell it’s catchy, and sometimes that’s enough. Especially when you’ve only listened to two new albums in the last week or so…

… though if you’ll accept a reissue, the Brendan O’Brien remixed and remastered version of Pearl Jam‘s Ten (only available on the deluxe and hideously expensive version, folks!) is a well-executed polish job on an album whose primary flaw was always its budget production. Take a trip back to 1992 as it should have sounded.

Writing about books

Sheesh, what do you know – I’ve not written any reviews this week. Though, to be fair, I’ve been compiling notes for This is Not a Game, and that should pretty much write itself once I sit down and attack it for a few hours. I’ve also been mired in reporting on an unusually competent (but very long) novel typescript, so it’s not like my brain’s been having a holiday from books. Frankly, managing to squeeze in an hour of reading before bed is about all that’s keeping me sane right now…

Freelance

Much as it should do (what with it being my job and all) the ol’ freelance work has been really chewing up my time this week. And to little obvious progress; last week I finally bit the bullet and ordered my first dedicated server, and the last seven days have been largely focussed on learning how to set up and run the thing. Thanks to some helpful hints and hands-on tweaking from friends with relevent skill-sets (cheers, Phil!), the machine is now serving pages to the web. Those pages are only the demo pages of a sample MODx install, though, so lots of work still to do (on the server and in general). Aye caramba!

Futurismic

The Big F rolls on relentlessly; a new piece of original fiction goes up in seven days time, one columnist is about to change direction and another is about to join the fold. Plus the usual bloggery from the fuzzy line between today and tomorrow… won’t you come join us?

Books and magazines seen

Nothing at all this week, I’m afraid, with the exception of the latest issue of SOUTH Poetry. This is not a problem; I have plenty to read already.

Public appearances

April is shaping up to be the month in which I appear in the public domain as more than a mere pedestrian.

• Back on Wednesday night, the Aeroplane Attack gang were interviewed on a local radio station (which, as we pointed out at the time, is a weird thing to happen to a band yet to play their frst show).
• This afternoon saw me talking over Skype with Tony from StarShipSofa, long-time internet amigo Jeremy Tolbert and Tor.com‘s unfeasibly-multitasking Pablo Defendini for the second instalment of the Sofanauts podcast, which should be available at the weekend
• Tomorrow night is Aeroplane Attack’s debut gig
• Next Wednesday sees me attending the Arthur C Clarke Awards ceremony as an employee of the publisher of one of the shortlisted books

Cripes. And we’ve got another gig lined up for Monday 11th May, too. It’s like a runaway train, y’know? Exhilarating, but a bit scary too. But as Hunter used to say: “buy the ticket, take the ride”.

Coda

It’s a common refrain, for sure, but it should be evident I’m pretty busy. And I expect you are, too – whether it be with worky-type stuff or getting the most out of your weekend downtime – so I’m going to sign off before dosing myself up with pills in an attempt to shift the last of this headcold before tomorrow’s show. Whatever’s on your to-do list, have as much fun doing it as you can, OK?

Oh, and did I mention I’m playing a gig tomorrow? Yes? OK, then.

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. ]

I finally got around to making a pilgrimage to the government surplus store at the other end of town, and secured myself a desk of a size more suitable to a man with a prodigious amount of stuff to do… not to mention one under which I can actually stretch out my legs. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a revolution in my working environment – behold!

Granted, all of that desk space will doubtless be festooned with work-in-progress by the end of next week, but I thrive on a certain degree of controlled chaos. And look – two monitors! No more switching windows to see the effects of code changes on a website design^[1]!

Writing about music

All is busy at The Dreaded Press, with new CDs arriving on an almost daily basis from established and unsigned acts alike, and regular contributions from a stable of four reviewers… but still I need more! Any volunteers out there?

Album of the week

Your recommended slice of audio bliss for the week is Hymn To The Immortal Wind, the new album from Japanese post-rock maestros Mono. My review of the album isn’t up yet, but my review of their show in Brighton a week ago tells you about as much as you need to know. Mono make atmospheric and poignant post-rock with the epic proportions of a snowcapped mountain range; absolutely beautiful, and the ideal tonic to the madness of the world. Listen, and be still.

Writing about books

Well, I’m mid-way through three different books (two novels, one non-fiction) and have a queue of reviews to write (mostly for here at VCTB or Futurismic, so no pressing deadlines except for the non-fiction title), but actual sit-down reviewing work has been thin on the ground of late. Much of my analytical energies (not to mention will to live) were drained by reading and reporting upon what must be the worst would-be novel I’ve yet encountered. Still, the silver lining shines: I’ve learned lots of new ways to not suck in my own fictional outpourings…

Futurismic

Things are ticking over nicely at Futurismic at the moment; it’s nearly new story time, and April sees us hosting a piece from a writer whose stature would have, to my mind at least, precluded him from bothering with a market as small as we are. It’s also a very different story to our normal fare; not that we always publish the same sort of stuff, but there’s a different type of Gonzo at work in this particular piece.

So keep your eyes peeled… it’ll be published next Wednesday, as well as Jonathan McCalmont’s Alternative Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. Happy days!

Freelance

As the lack of recent FPBs should indicate, there’s plenty of work in my inbox at the moment, and of various types. This is a good thing – who’s not glad of work when the news is full of redundancies? – but it’s really chewing away at my life in terms of scheduling. Trying to juggle a full-time freelance workload with editing two webzines and a relationship with someone who lives nearly 300 miles away is a new challenge, and I’d be lying if I said I’d not fumbled a ball or two. But nothing major, and I’m slowly getting the hang of it… though I’m realising that expecting to have more free time as a freelance may have been, if not naive, a little optimistic. Selah.

Aeroplane Attack

I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned here yet, but those who follow my ramblings on various social media will be aware that Aeroplane Attack have announced our live debut; the lovely ladies of Hong Kong Gardener’s Club have booked us for Saturday 25th April at the Havana Bar, just five minutes walk from the Hall of Mirrors. So, if you’re local to Velcro City, please consider popping along to witness the look of abject terror that will no doubt decorate my face as I play guitar to an audience for the first time ever… there’s a Facebook event with more details (including the other band on the line-up), and you can buy tickets in advance for a quid less than the door tax. Go on, you know you want to…

Oh, you’re busy that night? Well, it just so happens I can now announce our second live date as well! Subject to confirmation, we’ll be playing at the Edge of the Wedge on Monday 11th May; I don’t have details of line-up or door price for this yet, but I can say with confidence that they will be, in order, ‘good’ and ‘cheap or free’. So if you want to witness Velcro City’s foremost shoegazer-alt-rock revivalists in action, set one of those two dates aside and pop your earplugs in your pocket – we promise volume, melody and texture in approximately equal measure.

Books and magazines seen

Relatively few arrivals this week; the only ones of note are two Neal Asher novels from Tor, namely Line War in paperback and Shadow of the Scorpion in hardback. I already have … Scorpion in ARC form from the Night Shade Books limited print run, but have yet to read it^[2].

Coda

Well, there we have it – it feels good to knock out a proper FPB after a month or so of sporadic minimal updates. There’s definitely a cathartic component to it; maybe it’s a bit like journalling in that respect?

But anyway, enough waffle – there are things to do! have a great weekend, people – I surely intend to.

[ ² - Quelle surprise - looking at the TBR shelf, I could probably do nothing but read for three months solid and still not get through the titles I have waiting for me. Still, better to have more books than you have time for than too few, right? ]

I’m told that today is the first ‘official’ day of Spring; the weather here in Velcro City decided to jump the gun by a few days, because from Monday through to now, it’s been clear blue skies and fresh air – and all the more blissful for that. The sort of weather, in fact, that makes me remember that this town isn’t all bad…

After all, not all city folk can cycle down to the beach in a matter of minutes. That said, I wouldn’t want to be out sunbathing like some people are at the moment. It’s not quite warm enough yet.

Stuff

Well, it’s been a few weeks since we last had an instalment of FPB, and this is going to be another truncated one. My schedule has become a lot more randomised since I went full-time freelance, partly by necessity and partly by opportunity; what this means in real terms is that I’m not always here to knock out a full post on Friday afternoon, and when I am I may not have the amount of time I’d like.

Which means that I may have to reassess my approach to posting on VCTB, and start scattering stuff out in smaller pieces instead of dumping a week of my life at a time; as much as I’d hate to see it go, I don’t know if Friday Photo Blogging can survive the transition as a regular weekly occurrence.

But that’s not too bad; I console myself with the fact that I can’t post because I’m too damned busy, which is good for me and good for you, the reader (who, one assumes, would be even more bored than usual were I to make daily posts on how I wasn’t doing anything much at all). Work to do, people and bands to see… like Japanese post-rock stalwarts Mono, for example, who are the reason I’ll be heading out of town by the time this post goes live. There’ll be a review at TDP, of course, where we’re back to daily review output once again thanks to my growing little clade of reviewers.

(Oh, and if you’ve been pining for some Album of the Week advice, then I suggest you try Pure Reason Revolution’s Amor Vincit Omnia. I can’t be sure you’ll like it (in fact, I’m not entirely sure I like it), but it’s an impressive and ambitious piece of work that updates ELP/Yes-era prog for a modern audience. Trite lyrics, but staggering vocal melodies. Go listen to Pure Reason Revolution on Last FM, because MySpace blows.)

Books and magazines seen

High time I caught up on incoming materials, as there’s quite a stack developing. Magazine-wise, we have Foundation #103 and Interzone #221, the latter coming with yet another knock-out piece of cover art:

Then there’s the books. I don’t think the Pyr edition of Ian McDonald’s Cyberabad Days collection has been mentioned here yet (though mentioning it on Twitter aroused a fair amount of jealousy); I’ve already read it, and need to bash out a review some time fairly soon. But in summary: excellent, well worth your money.

Then there’s the second novel from Chris Beckett, Marcher, which I’m greatly looking forward to reading, and there’s Bruce Sterling‘s latest, The Caryatids, which I splashed out on in hardcover and am about a third of the way through at the moment.

The added bonus was a copy of Gonzo, the oral history of Hunter S Thompson assembled by Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour.

Comprising entirely of interview snippets from Thompson’s friends, family, colleagues and more, it paints a different picture of the man behind the legend. Possibly more notably, it paints a much kinder picture of Wenner than Thompson ever did in his own writing…

Coda

Well, there you go – a bit minimal for an FPB, but at least there’s something here, eh? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a gig to get ready for…

Well, probably not, but today it’s all blues skies and fresh air outdoors, and my lily has the first of its flowers in full bloom:

That’s springy enough for me. Or it will be until the next dismal overcast Monday rolls round, when I will curse the Earth’s axial tilt and scowl at the world through closed windows… but until then, yay!

Well, y’all get another episode of truncated ramblings today; my girlfriend is visiting for the weekend, and for some strange reason she’s not too keen on watching me batter out the inconsequentia of my life on the interwebs when we could be out enjoying the clement weather^[1].

But who am I to argue? After all, she just bought me The Chili Lover’s Cookbook, which is not only a wondrous gift of great puissance but a sign she knows me perhaps a little too well. Given that books and chilis are two of the most awesome things in the world, a book about chilis (and the correct usage thereof) is an item of great justice.

Suffice to say it’s been a busy week with its ups and downs, and that all is going well. While we’re talking about books, though, I’ll just list this week’s acquisitions, which are unusually numerous. In addition to final versions of Michael Cobley’s Seeds of Earth and Kay Kenyon’s City Without End (the latter in hardback – woohoo!), we have a new arrival in the shape of Tony Ballantyne’s Twisted Metal, which surely deserves some sort of award for its press release blurb: “In a world of intelligent robots who seem to have forgotten their own distant past, it is a time for war…”^[2]

Straight out of the Hollywood trailer playbook, eh? You can just imagine the guttural voice-over guy giving it his best clenched-fist-of-Conan bit. Looks like it could be an interesting read though, and has a cover to grab the eye of the avid mecha-war gamer:

Next is This Is Not A Game by Walter Jon Williams, which appears to be basically similar to Charlie Stross’ Halting State, if only in theme – it’s a technothriller about social networking and metaverse games, in other words. If it’s as good a read as Implied Spaces was, I’m sure it’ll be a corker.

Bland cover, though. Thriller marketing, I guess.

The nice people at Penguin are reissuing some more classics, and they’ve re-done John Christopher‘s cozy catastrophe The Death of Grass. Couldn’t make a book look a lot less sf-nal and a lot more literary, could you?

And finally a special mention for a book I ordered late last year (after Justin and I attended that lecture before the BSFA festivities up in the Big Smoke) – The Scientific Way of Warfare by Antoine Bousquet:

That’s going to make a bee-line for the top of the TBR pile, partly because I think it’ll be swift read, but also because everything Bousquet was talking about has only seemed to increase inrelevance in the last few months. And what a great cover!

Right, that’s the book porn sorted, so I’ll bid you adieu – I’ve doing the ‘meet the parents’ thing, so I’d better have my yearly bath.

Have a great weekend, people. Laters!

[ ¹ - I'll win her over eventually. Either that or she'll realise she's going out with an incorrigable geek and take the honourable way out. ]

[ ² - Seriously, sf publishing houses - hire someone who knows a bit more about the conventions of the genre to write these things. Sure, you want to sell it, but you can do that without sounding daft and/or desperate. I know this guy who could do that sort of thing, as it happens... ]

Well, you know musicians and their propensity for keerrrrrrazy highjinx. Somehow last Sunday (for reasons now forgotten) my bandmate Phil ended up playing some evolving little riff for about ten minutes with a tote bag^[1] on his head.

I’d like to be able to claim we were using some Eno-esque oblique strategies to come up with new ideas, but it would be more honest to confess we were mostly just mucking around…

Writing about music

We’re nearly back up to full throttle at TDP, so I’ve been writing more reviews. This year so far has seen an unprecedented number of submissions from unsigned bands, which is excellent – people getting off their arses instead of waiting for a label to come knocking is great news. However, some of them would be much better off working on their music beforehand…

Those of you among the Twitterati may have noticed that I’m now contributing #SoundBytes – 140-character album reviews – to Outshine, Jetse De Vries‘ Tweetmag. This is, incidentally, my first pro (and paid!) column of any sort, so I’m rather chuffed about it! My reviews go out every Tuesday evening (European time), so do tune in.

Jetse has managed to convince no less a luminary than Lucius Shepard for the movie reviews column on the Thursday slot; that’s one hell of a name to share a masthead with, I reckon.

Album of the week

Nothing particularly award-worthy reviewed this week (though the best of the rest would be Chickenhawk‘s eponymous début of stoner-spazzcore), so I’m going to recommend an old favourite in the form of Devin Townsend‘s Terria, one of the man’s more thoughtful solo side-project efforts. Because, sometimes, all you need is a bipolar be-skulleted Canadian guitar wizard.

Townsend seems to be one of those artists you either love or hate; I’m happy to fit into the former camp, having seen him perform live both as himself (i.e. fronting The Devin Townsend Band) and as frontman for the ridiculously heavy and unhinged Strapping Young Lad. If you’re into metal and you’ve not tried his stuff before, follow those links to Last FM and have a listen. I defy you to be indifferent.

Writing about books

Ah, the magic of procrastination! Having reached a particularly tricky bit of my Mind Over Ship review, I engaged the displacement engines and battered out a little review of Ehsin Masood’s Science & Islam, a History. In summary: decent little introductory text to a subject that’s much bigger than you may realise.

A little breathing space in the reading schedule has seen me start off on Kay Kenyon’s Bright of the Sky. Enjoying it so far, though Kenyon moves POV in mid-scene from time to time – although it’s always clearly signposted, it’s not a style I encounter often, and as such it can be a bit jarring. But so far it’s a strong story with a good premise, blending a sort of Greg Bear meets Greg Egan sf future with a science fantasy world set in the dimension next door; promises to get more interesting very quickly.

Freelance

The first fortnight of freelancing has been staggeringly unglamorous, largely involving clearing down a backlog of administrivia and catching up on daily tasks disrupted by my jaunt Northwards last week. But things are limbering up, and the daily schedule is starting to look a lot more manageable as I whittle away at it all. Now, if I could just mend my sleep-deprived^[2] bodyclock and get up at the same time every morning, I’d be rocking in the free world…

Now there’s a bit of temporal space, I can start on a few of those ‘someday soon’ tasks that have been sat in my Remember The Milk inbox for months… things like skinning my portfolio site and making it something more than a newly-installed honey-jar for spam-bots, f’rinstance.

Futurismic

I’m pretty happy with things at Futurismic at the moment. The increase in output over the last few weeks (facilitated by a new approach to pre-planning posts the day before) is showing traffic dividends already, which is great news.

My interview with Bruce Sterling went up to much less fanfare than I had hoped, but seems to have been well-received by those who read it. It’ll still stand out as a golden fanboy moment for me, though… at least until the day I get to meet Sterling in person^[3].

We’ve got a new story in the purchase process, too; another sober piece, but one I think folk are going to like, so keep ‘em peeled. In the meantime, Marissa Lingen‘s “Erasing the Map” is short, smart and thought-provoking, so why not take a ten-minute break and read it now, eh?

Creative writing

Oooh, look, a new FPB section! As much to keep myself informed as for the benefit of you lot, I figure I’ll keep a vague record of my non-work related writing output here as well. And as such I can report that, while story writing has not yet been achieved (thanks to the aforementioned bodyclock wreckage), I’ve probably written more poetry in the last month than I did in the preceding year. That’s not to say it’s good poetry, of course, but it feels nice to get the engines turning again, and it comes a little easier every time.

I’m wondering how much it has helped that I restarted journalling at the beginning of the year – just scribbling down an account of the day in a Moleskine before I go to sleep. It seems to have the effect of making me remember the ephemera of things a little more clearly, and enables me to map my thinking-over-time a little better.

That said, it’s all banal so far (with occasional flashes where something grabs my mind and runs off with the pen); the downside is it can reveal just how much of your time you spend doing effectively nothing. Hmm. The unexamined life, and all that.

Books and magazines seen

Another mailout from the BSFA appeared last week, including the first issue of Vector not to feature a review by me for quite some time, if memory serves. Still plenty of other good stuff in there, though, most of which (along with Focus) I have yet to read the bulk of.

The last fortnight has seen the arrival of the mass-market paperback of Iain M Banks’ Matter (bringing my total to four different editions, only the promo ARC of which has actually been read), and the final bound ARC version of Toby Litt‘s generation ship story Journey Into Space (no, I still haven’t gotten round to the spiral-bound galley they sent a while back; it’s in the TBR queue).

Genuinely new titles appearing in the last fortnight include the arrival of a new title from Icon Books (literally the day after the Science & Islam review, which felt a little spooky). This one’s a lot more beefy – Atomic: the First War of Physics and the Secret History of the Atom Bomb 1939-49 by Jim Baggott.

Looks fascinating; also looks immense (550 pages plus, medium font). So many books, so little time… a sentiment that applies equally to this week’s other new arrival in the form of a limited edition (#204 of 555) ARC of China Mieville‘s new title, The City & The City:

You can all be jealous now. The time will be found to read that book very soon, I can assure you.

Coda

So, yeah; a busy fortnight that included a four-day jag to Manchester by train (miraculously avoiding any snow-based snarl-ups), the ordering of a kick-arse new computer (which has yet to arrive – guessing on Monday) and purchasing of a second-hand Wacom Bamboo tablet (cheers, Jasper), one pub quiz, two band rehearsals, one live gig (The Confederate Dead at The Cellars in Eastney; one of our better local bands), a lot of hours at the keyboard, and a distinct lack of opportunity to sit and panic about the future. Which strikes me as a pretty decent start to this whole freelance malarkey… though it is only a start, and I need to be building up momentum sooner rather than later. Onward and upwards, eh?

Anyway, the weekend’s here and I’ve got stuff to do – and I’ll bet you have, as well. So let’s bid each other a good weekend and get to it, shall we? Yeah, why not!

Take care, folks.

[ ¹ - The tote bag in question is used by our bassplayer to carry his pedal board. That's just how rock and roll we are, yo. ]

[ ² - The ongoing upstairs neighbour issues are, er, ongoing. ]

[ ³ - This will no doubt be a horrible melange of fawning and gibbering on my part, despite my hopes that I'd be calm, erudite and incisive. Looking at how Sterling made my emailed questions sound naive without even trying to, however, I can confidently predict that, face-to-face, he'll make me seem (and feel) about two foot tall should the opportunity ever arise. ]

Yeah, so I’ve used this one before, but it’s appropriate and a favourite, so nyar.

Why a slippery slope? Because I just cut my connections to the world of conventional employment; as of 4pm today, I am a full-time self-employed freelance. The slippery slope could be to self-determination and contentment; it could be to penury and the lamentation of my own hubris.

It’s up to me to make sure it’s the former.

Writing about music

Things are starting to pick up at TDP once again, with four reviews published this week. I’ve got another new writer on board (who handled the Architects album review, and who should be working away on a report from their live show this Tuesday just gone), adding to the cadre and providing me a specialist who is more likely to grok some of the more extreme and cutting edge forms of metal than myself. Which means he’ll be the one to endure the illiterate abuse of teenagers who’ve just seen someone call their favourite band generic or average…

Album of the week

No contest this time out; Old Money by Omar Rodríguez-López (the guitarist chap with the big mop of helmet-hair from The Mars Volta) is pretty much everything you’d expect. A mental mish-mash of high-paced prog weirdness, and no guitar tone left un-effected – put on your seatbelt before listening.

Writing about books

Regular readers will have noticed the first of my ‘reading journal’ entries earlier in the week, and I have notes on Interzone #220 to turn into another one sometime soon. No ‘proper’ reviewing has been committed this week, though I shall be taking a concerted leap into the Mind Over Ship piece over the weekend.

Futurismic

It’s been a busy and successful week over at the Big F. Two items got a link back from the Double-Boing (although, typically enough, they were the posts that I threw in as flippant filler; I’m evidently a poor judge of audience interest), and The Adam Roberts Project’s first headline appearance has generated a brisk comments thread and plenty of interest from elsewhere. These sort of things make a webzine editor a happy person^[1].

Freelance

So, yeah, this is where it’s all at now. Sailing the seas of self-employment, a one-man privateer with a letter of marque and a whole bunch of over-extended metaphors… or something like that, anyway.

Now the moment is actually here, I feel kind of strange – part terrified, part Zen-master calm. I’ve thrown myself into the maelstrom; now all I have to do is learn how to swim without floats, and from there it’s a short (hah!) step to surfing with the finesse and élan of a buff and tousled Aussie beach-bum.

Yeah, so, these metaphors: I haz dem. My mind’s in an odd place right now. Good, but odd.

But hey, The Big Project finally went live, as announced earlier today! Plus people have lots of work for me to do, of varying types. It’s rather a relief to now have the time to think about doing them. It will be more of a relief when yet more requests come in further down the line; the eternal hustle starts now^[2].

Books and magazines seen

Another blank week on the new books front. Not a bad thing, but still somehow disappointing. Maybe I like the attention; it’s nice when the postman actually has to speak to you. Nice for me, anyway; the postie always looks a bit discomforted^[3].

Coda

So, this week’s coda is not just the coda to a seven-day passage, but to a nearly-two-year composition, and marks the end of one suite at the same time as ushering in another… (See? Metaphors. Beyond my control right now, I’m telling you.)

People keep asking me how it feels, and I really don’t have an answer. Liberating but petrifying is about as close as I can get to summarising it. After years of saying “yeah, that’d be cool, I should do that sometime”, I’m actually doing something about chasing my dreams. So all you lot get to watch the highs and lows of some guy biting off more than he can chew… or (more hopefully) mumbling around a big but manageable mouthful for a while. I hope you’ll stick around for the ride.

Anyway, I think I’ve earned myself a Friday Curry; hell knows I may not be able to afford one for a while to come, so I might as well give the world of employment a decent send-off.

I hope you all have a great weekend, too. Peace…

[ ¹ - Unlike anonymous emails from people saying "I expect you're going to gloat over Realms of Fantasy shutting down, because you're a c*nt", which are incredibly depressing. And completely real, too. ]

[ ² - Feel free to plug me to anyone you know, loyal readers. I'm not proud. At least, not in that respect. ]

[ ³ - It's his own fault; if he turned up a bit after 6:30am, I'd probably answer the door wearing more than a towel. ]