Colin Harvey's Blog

Posted by Colin Harvey

Posted by Colin Harvey

Posted by Colin Harvey

Posted by Colin Harvey

The Speculative Literature Foundation's 2008 Gulliver Travel Research Grant Closed is now closed to applications.

This year there were 23 applicants, down from the 2006 record of 35, but well up on last year's disappointing 12.

The SLF now has two weeks to render its judgement. Results will be posted on the 16th.

The grant will re-open for applications on 1st July 2009. Please do not apply before that date.

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

Posted by Colin Harvey

Back in July, I posted a blog about the 2008 Gulliver Travel Research Grant. You can find out the details here, but the short description is that you can apply for a grant if you are writing a sci-fi, fantasy or horror novel that requires you to travel, and you can put together a proposal.

The bad news is that there is only one grant given out each year, and that the deadline of September 30th is rapidly approaching.

The good news is that after that post went up, more money became available, so the SLF increased the grant to US$800.

You can find full rules here.

Until next time.

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

To mis-quote Charles Dickens, "it was the best of cons, it was the worst of cons..."

The worst part wasn't actually the con, it was the stuff around it. Like losing the return part of my ticket, and having to pay another £47 (US$90) for another one, and other assorted mishaps like half my books being trapped in DH(Hel)L. I will never, ever use DHL again. They are the absolute pits.

But the con itself was fantastic, even though I saw very little apart from the Dealer's Room and the Bar. Well, what else is there?

Kudos to Paul Kane, Marie, Helen, Vicky and Martin especially for their tireless work, but also to everyone else who volunteered. I'll probably post something over at the BFS Board as well. And also to Rob, who paid for a day pass, just to help me sell books, and to Sharon, who flew over from Germany for the Con. That's dedication!

I'd recommend this con to anyone in the UK, or who has an excuse to get to Britain at about that time, and can stretch their trip to accomodate it.

Posted by Colin Harvey

My debut as an editor, Killers, is published on September 19th. I'll be at the British Fantasy Society's annual con, at Nottingham in the UK. Two of the contributors and I will be giving a reading, and if all goes to plan, at 6pm Rocky Mountain Time, I'll be making my debut on the radio as a guest of Ken Hudnall's show in El Paso, Texas.

We set up a contributors group on Yahoo which allowed the writers to talk to one another. The subject which aroused the most contention was the cover art. Until it came to posting it, I'd taken the cover art as much for granted as much as most people do. Yet we have a set of conventions for it, just as we do for most other things in publishing.

In the UK especially, most crime cover art is photographic. Horror and fantastic fiction -by contrast- is drawn.

So when we came to decide on the cover art for a cross-genre anthology, which genre did we represent? The fantastic, or crime? Because Killers features SF, fantasy and horror, any bow to one sub-genre would be unrepresentative of the others.

Because all the stories were crime or thrillers, albeit tinged with the fantastic, so it seemed a no-brainer to represent the crime/thriller genre. We elected on a photograph that would carry a tinge of strangeness.

But understandably some of the horror writers felt that we'd taken a wrong turning, perhaps disappointed that the mental images that contributed to their own stories weren't adequately represented. Most (hopefully) reached an accomodation with their expectations, but it hammered home to me how much we take cover art for granted.

No longer!

Posted by Colin Harvey

I've just returned after a week off.

It's been my intention since finishing the first draft of Winter Song to resume today.

Intending to do it is one thing, actually doing it is harder.

Want to write full time? These are the days when the aspiring full-timers get sorted from the real pros. When you look at 100,000 words that has to be licked into shape over the next twelve weeks.

When you look at the first page, and you have six sets of comments from your crit group that are mutually contradictory, when you know that you need to make the character's evolution flow consistently, when the setting needs to fleshed out, when your minor characters need to have a few words of description, the science needs to have the logic holes plugged, and above all when it needs to flow.

OK, enough grousing. Get on with it, Harvey.

Four hours later, two pages are done. Two of the hardest pages I've ever revised, but they're done.

The next two will flow more easily tomorrow, hopefully.

If they don't, they'll just have to be worked at. One way or another.

Posted by Colin Harvey

My debut as a panellist at a US Worldcon was daunting; the room was packed out, I was moderating a subject in which I was interested, but about which my expertise was limited, and the panel was fearsome in its expertise:

Henry Stratmann is a full-time cardiologist and part-time science fiction writer.

Diana Rowland has worked as a street cop, a detective, a computer forensics specialist, a crime scene investigator, and a morgue assistant,

Cordelia Willis is a crime scene investigator.

Perrianne Lurie is a doctor of emergency medicine.

I needn't have worried.

The panel were courteous, the audience interested.

Once we got past the opening salvoes of how glossy and unrealistic CSI was, what emerged was how surprisingly often the series got it right; Catherine Willows with a bloated body in the bath, budget cuts manifesting occasionally, pressure of multiple demands.

Of course the series glosses over the realities: as one panellist put it, "you don't see the point at which the crime lab call you to ask which ten of your fifty-seven samples you'd like processed."

When asked what they'd like to see developed, Perianne Lurie wanted to see APHIS truly automated, rather than the laborious job of manual matching.

Cordelia Willis would like to see the facility to separate out cross-contaminating DNA.

Diana Rowland wants to see a one hundred per cent accurate way of telling whether the suspect is really, really telling the truth.

Henry Stratmann suggested a brain scan, given that when a suspect lies, they use different parts of their brain.

It was actually dispappointing to have had to wind the panel down, but sadly all things must come to an end, including this series of posts on Worldcon panels. I hope they've been interesting and informative.

Posted by Colin Harvey

I attended three panels at Denvention, the last of which was to discuss living as a full-time writer. I was joined by SFWA president Russell Davis, Steve Miller, and Robin Owens.

I was moderating, which allowed me to sit back and listen to two very experienced pros and a newer writer (Owens) talk about nearly a century of combined writing experience.

The first thing that surprised me is that many full-time writers encounter periods when they have to hold down a full or part-time job to tide them over unforeseen cash-flow problems. Given that that's my current situation (my wife's pay vanished due to a 'computer error' in July), and I'd felt something of a fraud sitting on the panel as a 'full-time writer,' this was quite a relief.

Advice:

-Write every day

-Plan, plan, and keep re-planning -especially finances

-Pay off every single debt that you can afford to before giving up the day job

Don't rule out going back to A day job; it doesn't have to be the old one, if you can work less hours or for less money (ergo less involvement).

Choose carefully where to live (this can make an enormous difference to living costs)

Sell projects based on proposals rather than completed ms (only applies to the established writer)

Two postscripts:

1. Writing gets better and is easier to write, because of practicing the craft every day. This is so self-evident that it's often overlooked.

2. Writing as a full-time job brings pressures --deadline, multi-tasking-- that 'hobbyists' never feel. That's why established writers try to put off aspirant full-timers -- there's no way to describe how it feels.

But the rewards are that the writer is their own boss, and when the job is done, it's hugely satisfying to be able to pick what to do with the rest of one's day.

Posted by Colin Harvey

Many writers will run screaming from the room rather than moderate.

The moderator is the helmsman, or to use another analogy, is the air traffic controller. The moderator stops the more extrovert panel members from sidelining the wallflowers, takes questions from the audience, and ensures that the conversation stays on-topic.

For the participant who wants to self-publicize, moderating is a nightmare.

For others, it's a pleasure. It allows the jack of all trades who is master of none to join the masters of the specialist subject and not be left dangling in the breeze.

I moderated three panels at Denvention. It's difficult to take notes while moderating, but in the case of city-building, I had the excellent Spartedza taking notes which you can read on her LiveJournal account.

At a later date, I'll post on the other panels, CSI in the Future and After the Day Job.

More on them later.

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

Writing for publication is as much a business as it is an art or craft.

While workshops endlessly cover the artistic aspects such as point of view, show versus tell, and plotting, most such workshops will take perhaps a single afternoon out of a ten day workshop to discuss the business aspects.

So it was wonderful that the Worldcon team provided no less than eighteen panels on the craft. The full list comprised:

Agents from the Writer's Perspective

Are Writers Workshops Right for You?

Becoming an Insider: Joining the Convention Community

Breaking into Hollywood

Dealing with publishers, Large and Small

How to Give an Effective Reading - Workshop

How to write a good query letter

How Writers Fit into the Publishing Business

My First Five Pages and why my Book Didn’t Sell

Rising Stars 101 (This was a basic introductory panel that should have started the thread)

Rising Stars Reception

Schmoozing 101

Shameless self-promotion

Survival Tips for the Beginning Writer

The Business of Creativity - Practical Seminar on Financial Matters

The Secret of Being a Published Fiction Writer

Vanity press pitfalls

What SF editors are looking for

I didn't make it to all the panels, but I did manage to visit about half of them, and I'll post notes on the panels that I attended over the next few weeks.

Posted by Colin Harvey

The Hugo Award winners for 2007 were announced on Saturday, August 9, 2008 at Denvention 3, the 66th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Denver Colorado:

Novel: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

Novella: "All Seated on the Ground" by Connie Willis

Novelette: "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang

Short Story: "Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear

Non-fiction Book: Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher

Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Stardust Written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn. Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Charles Vess. Directed by Matthew Vaughn

Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Who: "Blink" Written by Steven Moffat. Directed by Hettie Macdonald

Professional Editor, Long Form: David Hartwell

Professional Editor, Short Form: Gordon Van Gelder

Professional Artist: Stephan Martiniere

Semiprozine: Locus, edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi

Fanzine: File 770

Fan Writer: John Scalzi

Fan Artist: Brad Foster

Posted by Colin Harvey

OK, so you're at the World Scienec Fiction in Denver, but you don't want to go panels listening to talking heads.

But you love Joe Haldeman or Robert J Sawyer, and you'd love to meet them. So you can one of their books in the dealer's room (where I spend some of my non-panel time staffing the SLF desk) and go to a signing session and have them sign it. Or you can attend a Kaffeeklatsch with them, and be one of eight fans spending half an hour or so chatting with their favourite author over a cup of coffee.

If that doesn't grab you, there's a Masquerade in which people get to dress up in costume, or there's the Hugo Award ceremony. Plus there are parties every night celebrating Weird Tales' 85th anniversary, or Pyr Books new releases or the convention bids for the next few years. All of them give great opportunities to munch on some nibbles, sink a few drinks and meet lots more interesting people (often the fans are the most interesting people -- from Forensic Anthropologists to twenty-year-old world travellers taking a break).

Of course, by the time you read this, Denvention 3 will probably have finished.

The good news is that we'll all be getting together in Montreal next year.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

I meant to post every day as I did at Eastercon, honest...

...but there's so much going on here. It's like some weird variant of Parkinson's Law, whereby panels and parties expand to fill time available.

Most of my time has been spent on the Rising Stars thread of programmes: How To Write A Query Letter, Surviving As A Professional Writer, Breaking Into Hollywood -- just three of the highlights of the thread, but there were fifteen --yes, fifteen-- other panels on that thread alone.

I moderated three panels in four sessions, which was a fairly brutal concentration, but the panel organizers have thousands of participants to organize in hundreds of panels, so I've no complaints, and in some ways it's beneficial to squeeze them all together.

First of all I got to meet four medical and legal experts on CSI in the Future which turned out to be a stimulating deconstruction of the challenges facing real life investigators as well as the things they'd like to see developed; brain scans that would act as a true lie detector; a way of separating DNA traces that have got mixed together; and an automated APHIS system that would save thousands of laborious man hours.

Then PC Hodgell and Hugo and Nebula nominated Benjamin Rosenbaum discussed City-Building with me, roaming from Ankh-Morpork to Ambergris to the Cities In Flight.

Lastly, I had the pleasure of decades of experience from SFWA President Russell Davis, veteran author Steve Miller and newbie Robin Owens, as they discussed After the Day Job -- surviving as a full time writer. It was both terrifying and exhilerating hearing how hard they work, but at least it kick started me into posting this blog!

More tomorrow.

Hasta Luego

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

There was a time in 1975, when I was fourteen, that Michael G. Coney seemed to be everywhere. In the space of a few months, I read Winter's Children, the story of aliens on a freezing planet; The Hero of Downaways, shrunken people battling giant gophers, according to the cover; The then almost unpronounceable Syzygy, with it's story of six moons and a giant tide; Mirror Image, about metamorphic aliens; and most memorable, Hello Summer, Goodbye, with it's seaside fishing village and adolescent lovers.

Even at fourteen, I could recognize that these weren't particularly alien planets. They were enough like home that Coney's colonies and alien worlds were comfortingly familiar, but strange enough for my taste in aliens to be satisfied.

Then Coney was gone, like the tide in his novels.

Fast-forward thirty years, and the news that John Clute has written an obituary for Michael G. Coney, yet there was no mention of it on the SFWA website; a mere ten years after he'd placed on the final Nebula Ballot for Best Novelette, Coney was gone, and distressingly, no one even seemed to know.

There can be fewer reminders to any aspiring author of how ephemeral publishing, and even fame can be. Had he been American, and perhaps closer to the SFWA's decision-makers, Coney might well have been Author Emeritus material.

Instead of which his books were out of print, and no one seemed to care.

Peter Crowther is a publisher with an astute eye, and a long-time lover of the speculative genre. Now PS Publishing has reissued Coney's most famous book, Hello Summer Goodbye (known in the US as Rax) and it's previously unpublished (at least commercially) sequel, I Remember Pallahaxi.

You can read the review here, and learn more about this much under-rated writer.

Posted by Colin Harvey

A little while ago I reviewed the June F&SF, making positive comments about Ted Kosmatka's 'The Art of Alchemy.' Soon after I was reading his 'Divining Light' in Asimovs, and realized that here was a writer to watch.

A writer's career is littered with pitfalls. Look down the list of John W. Campbell Award winners and amongst the Nebula Award winners and the bestsellers, you'll see names that haven't fulfilled their potential; PJ Plauger is the obvious one, but who is Julia Ecklar? (the 1991 winner, but whose priorities seem more musical than literary).

So it's a little early to be making prophecies for Kosmatka, and part of the frisson that I felt was because he was in both the genre's two big magazines in very quick succession. Nonetheless, even that achievement isn't that common.

I've read most of the hot new writers coming through, and there are many good ones -- Will McIntosh, Benjamin Rosenbaum, David Moles, Paul Meloy, Tim Pratt and Aliette de Bodard spring to mind. But none of them can match the scientific content of Kasmatka's work, allied with the intensity of the prose and the sheer flawed but sympathetic humanity of his characters. I'm looking foward to his appearance in this year's Dozois Year's Best. with more anticpation than I've felt since about 1990, when I read a couple of stories in quick succession by a certain Greg Egan.

SF is a literature of ideas, and to avoid becoming an orthodoxy needs periodic injections of new blood; it needs new talents like Ted Kosmatka. Let's hope he continues to give pleasure and help maintain and even extend the field.

Posted by Colin Harvey

Recently I blogged about meeting Bruce Holland Rogers and how it sparked off thoughts about how writers are expected more and more to follow the 'right' career path. While I agree with some of those strictures, I'm uncomfortable with the vehemence with which some agents and writer's organizations rail against those who don't necessarily agree with their point of view.

That led me to examine my own motivations. The reasons I write can be classified as follows:

1. The creative act. The pleasure of good writing is better than any illicit substance, better than all but the best food and sex. There's a buzz that can last for days; even if two days later I re-read my 'masterpiece' and decide that it's rubbish!

2. Immortality. I have no children, nor am I likely to have any. My stories are my children, and like our children, are my attempt at immortality. I know that when I die, every time someone reads my story, for a moment I'm no longer dust.

3. Communication. There's no point in me writing for myself. I write to communicate. Generally speaking, the best paying markets are those with the biggest circulation, but it doesn't automatically follow. So given a choice between two markets, I'll take the one with the biggest reach.

4. Status. Of course I'd like the respect of my peers, but I'd like it for the work that I do, not based on what market I've sold it to, and what it pays.

5. Money. I'd like money but only insofar as it releases me from having to work, enabling me to write even more.

Those are my reasons. If you're a writer, what are yours?

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

When I was nine or ten, I read the Chronicles of Narnia. Correction: I devoured them. I loved them all, although The Silver Chair and The Last Battle seemed rather sad to me. My favourite was always Prince Caspian. There was something about the return of the children after only a year in our world to find that over a millenium has passed in Narnia that blew my mind completely. Maybe too, I could identify with the young prince, fleeing for his life. And those glorious black-and-white interior illustrations.

Even when I re-read it as an adult, Prince Caspian was one of the books that I really enjoyed.

So I went to see the film with mixed feelings. On the one hand, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was both faithful to the book, and a film that I enjoyed. But TLTW&TW was only a moderate favourite, so there wasn't the same emotional investment.

Going to see the film version of a favourite book is always something of a lottery. Will they be faithful to the storyline? Will the budgetary and intellectual limitations of the film-makers allow them to match the power of my imagination?

Actually, the first part was astonishingly faithful; the first real diversion from the book wasn't until Caspian met the children, and that actually helped the story. Then the film veered right away, with a whole extra pre-battle battle, a sort of aperatif conflict thrown in, but again, by upping the ante and really emphasizing Miraz's villainy, it actually worked.

For all that it's a favourite book, for once I wasn't disappointed. It'll be interesting to re-read it now in light of having seen the film.

Posted by Colin Harvey

I had lunch with my friends Bruce and Holly last week before they returned to Oregon after two years in the UK. I'll miss them more than I should, considering we've only been able to get together twice, and they're merely a trans-Atlantic flight and attendant security checks away.

On the journey home I began thinking about Bruce the writer, rather than Bruce my friend

Bruce the Heretic:

Who makes his living by writing three wonderfully crafted short-short stories a month, and sending them to his seven hundred subscribers, who each pay ten dollars a year.

He also teaches creative writing, but he couldn't do that were he not 'walking the walk.' His numerous awards validate those classes, and he has the experience of writing gaming tie-ins to show that he can write novels -- but simply chooses not to at this time.

Increasingly a writer's career advice seems to consist solely of:

1. Write a novel

2. Find an agent

3. Sell it to a big publisher

4. Repeat 1 and 3

with these optional extras

5. Write short-stories

6. Sell to the highest paying market

7. If rejected, submit to the next highest-payer

8. If you run out of pro-markets, put it away until the next market appears.

But one size doesn't fit all, and Bruce outlines why in Word Work, which I'll blog about separately.

I'm not advocating that the novice necessarily this example, but nor do theyr have to blindly follow a career path advocated by agents and others with vested interests, who are becoming increasingly aggressive in their preaching of The Only True Path To Happiness As A Writer.

Posted by Colin Harvey

It's a tough life being a writer. In 2000 less than one in seven writers in the UK was able to live on their income, while one in fourteen was living below the poverty line. Sometimes it can be a desperate life.

I'm one of the Managment Committee of the Speculative Literature Foundation, and when the organization was founded four or five years ago, it was decided fairly early on that help should be practical -- you can pick up advice on how to do it in pretty much any internet chat room, but there's a distinct paucity of money in the form of grants for genre writers.

So we decided to make a US$600 grant available for writers needing to travel to research their work, if that work is science-fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream or magic realism -- any one of the sub-genres covered under that umbreall catch-all 'speculative fiction.'

Click on the link and make your application.

But a couple of words of warning -- do NOT apply via Suite101, but through the SLF. I'll be pretty annoyed if I get any coming through here, and will delete them unread.

Second, treat it as seriously as you treat a job application; put real effort into yourgrant proposal, in terms of telling us why you want to go, when in theory everything you need to research a novel is on the internet.

The deadline, by the way, is September 30th.

Good luck, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Abyssinia

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

My first novel Vengeance is being reissued, this time by Swimming Kangaroo Books, who have already published Lightning Days and The Silk Palace.

Most writers will have a special place in their hearts for their first book. So it is with me and my SF novel Vengeance. It was first published in 2001 in electronic format, but the company concerned never really got off the ground, and it quickly vanished without trace.

Two years later a small press contacted me and asked if they could publish it; they collpased before it even made it to press, but at least I got to keep the token advance.

By that time I'd become convinced it was jinxed and put it out via lulu, but while I sold a few copies, it was at about this time that I sold Lightning Days to Swimming Kangraoo, and knew that this was a bigger opportunity, so poor old Vengeance got a little neglected.

Now it has its chance with a proper publisher in all formats.

So...you are cordially invited to a launch party for it on Saturday the 28th June from11am CST for 1 hour.

The Launch Party will take place at the SK Chat Room:

You don’t have to register to chat, just type your name in the field and come on in.

Larianne Wills and I will each chat and answer questions about our books. We'll be giving away copies of books given away at various intervals so people have plenty of opportunities to win prizes -- do turn up!

Ciao Ciao

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

I mentioned last month that an increasing way of generating revenue (so that you Dear Reader can get your fiction-fix for free) is to have fund drives.

So without further ado, over to my friend, Susan Marie Groppi, editor of the wonderful Strange Horizons:

"Strange Horizons is unusual for SF magazines. We're the longest-running online magazine in the genre, and we've built our reputation by showcasing exciting new voices in the field. We see ourselves as part of a community, part of this larger world of SF readers and writers and fans. We depend on the community for our support, and for our very existence.

Donate $25 and you can have your own Strange Horizons member card, with our logo and your name on one side, with exclusive original artwork by Jeremiah Tolbert on the other side. If you donate $50, you can have a lovely Strange Horizons logo mug or t-shirt. For $100, you can have a mug -and- a t-shirt, along with a selection of some of the best small-press zines and chapbooks in speculative fiction. Donors who give us $250 or more get all of those lovely prizes, and they also get our portable tea party package, which now includes a hand-knit tea cozy in your choice of colors.

Everyone who donates is entered in a special prize drawing. We have a great set of prizes this year, including a lot of original artwork, magazine subscriptions, and a hand-knit hat monster that will eat your head. (Seriously!) We're also going to be doing special bonus prize drawings during the month, and I'll be posting more information on that later."

Take a look over at Strange Horizons website!

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

I'm painfully aware that it's been about a month since I last posted on my blog. That's because as a writer, I have two or three key projects, and in order to keep them on track, have had to devote all my time to them -- even if it means no time to blog.

One thing that aspiring writers often don't realize is that a writer's greatest selling point to professional editors is reliability. If an editor sets you a deadline, move heaven and earth and work through the night if you have to, to meet it.

All the advice in the world about writing techniques is worthless, if a writer has a bad reputation for unreliability.

The first project is my novel, Winter Song. In order to deliver it by next year, I need to write about a thousand words a day while it's in draft stage.

Once that is done, my second priority is to ensure that I deliver the requisite four articles a month to Suite101. Which is where things have gotten a little tricky, in that the time involved isn't just the time needed to write the piece, but that needed to read the source material. Magazines like Asimovs and F&SF are each about sixty thousand words long, the length of an Agatha Christie. But when I foolishly took on China Mieville's New Crobuzon trilogy, I discovered after I started reading Perdido Street Station that each volume is between a quarter and a third of a million words --the length of four or five ordinary novels-- and even I can only read so fast!

Things are returning to normal, and you should see the review of the first volume of that trilogy --Perdido Street Station-- next week, and some blogs for good measure.

Posted by Colin Harvey

We're so used to getting our fiction for free on the web, that it's easy to forget that the people who provide it often incur costs, and often bear them out of their own pockets.

One trend that was started some years ago by Strange Horizons is to have fund drives, whereby people pledge money in return for small prizes, or for the chance to go into a raffle.

So it is that the people at the excellent Flash Me! webzine have picked up this trend. If you're not familar with them, Flash Me! publishes micro-fiction, stories of less than 500 words, ideal for reading on the bus or the train. In this case they've pledged instant rewards for pledging certain amounts, while everyone goes into a prize draw.

One of the prizes is my novel The Silk Palace, while Bruce Boston's wonderful Stoker-nominated The Guardener's Tale, and Writers of the Future volume XXIII are also on offer.

Do go and pay them a visit. They deserve your support. And you may win a good book in the process.

Posted by Colin Harvey

You may -or may not- be aware that my article F&SF June 2008 Reviewed has been selected as the Editor's Choice for this week.

Although my novel Lightning Days was a finalist for the USA News Best Book Award for SF in 2006, and my short story 'The Bloodhound' won 3rd place in Ralan's Grabber Prize that same year, I've never actually won anything outright, so I'm absolutely delighted.

One of the things to learn when writing is to learn when to stop; that sometimes Less Is More. And that different readers react differently to their personal experiences. I could have written more about Rand B. Lee's 'Litany' in that review, but it would have been a reaction based on my own prejudices rather than any absolute qualities in the story, and it was already the longest paragraph by far -- adding to it would have unbalanaced the whole article.

That the story struck me as Zelzany-esque may have to do with its New Mexico setting, where Roger Zelazny settled in the 1980s, or the Greek references to kourabiedes, which evoked Kallikanzeros from his Hugo Award-winning novel '--And Call Me Conrad,' or it may be that the Archetypes reminded me of Zelazny's Trumps. Certainly while there was nothing obvious in Lee's use of language --controlled to Zelazny's free-flowing-- there was something there.

But to most people, Roger Zelazny is dead and gone, so such comparisons would have been pointless.

None of this may be obvious to most readers. And it was unnecessary. I won the vote on what was in the review, rather than a paean to a dead writer, no matter how good he was.

Posted by Colin Harvey

I've already confessed to my shameful reading of New Wives Tales, and it's reasonably accurate description of blokes (so kudos to Adele Parks for her research and the quality of her characterization), but not content with skiving off on Saturday, yesterday was a Bank Holiday in the UK.

I've just finished Greg Egan's Quarantine, which I'm reviewing for Strange Horizons, but rather than start Terenesia by the same author - which is for the same review -- I wanted something I could read in the sunshine outside. That ruled out F&SF, which I'll be reviewing tomorrow, as that's on my laptop, and contrary to those TV ads where you can read a laptop on the beach, the glare's just too much to cope with.

Instead, I baulked.

After all, it's not every day we get sunshine on a Bank Holiday.

So I snuck - yes, snuck, dear reader- out into the garden with Agatha Christie's Dead Man's Folly.

In many ways, it's an almost archetypal Christie; many of the characters are stock ones -- the rich husband, younger wife who's married him for his money, almost-mad-scientist, xenophobic yokels. And the plot is standard Christie, borrowed from at least two other books. But there are signs that Christie was alert to the changing demographics of Britain in the 1950s, and there is a wry self-pastiche in crime-writer Ariadne Oliver.

Hugely enjoyable. And now it's back to work.

Posted by Colin Harvey

It had to happen.

I've been reading sci-fi and fantasy for nearly forty years now, and for the last few months, I've been reading it almost non-stop. As well as writing it, I'm suddenly inundated with requests for reviews.

Ever since Chloe (our Springer) had a series of strokes at Easter, we've been more or less confined to the house, and given British weather (ie rain), that's meant we've been confined in the house. Nor are we noted for our spontanaiety, so it was something of a shock when Kate suggested on Friday night that we visit her parents the following day.

The forecast was good, so I thought, 'why not?'

Off we trundled at seven a.m., and because it was short notice, I forgot to take any of my regular reading material.

Instead, because the weather was nice enough to sit on the beach, and in my in-law's garden, a mile or so from the sea, I read one of Kate's books.

New Wives' Tales by Adele Parks is the story of the stay-at-home mum whose husband has forsaken her for the office ice-queen who's perfect in every way, including bitchiness, the mum's best friend who tries to stay friends with both of them, and the various men in their lives. It sounds awful, but it was curiously addictive, a little like being presented with a large jar of roasted cashew nuts (one of my weaknesses). I ploughed through it in just over 24 hours.

What actually redeemed it was Parks' characterizeration of the men, which started off seemingly cliched, but by the end felt unsettingly accurate. Whether that was the law of cognitive dissonance at work, I'm not sure, but if you find a copy, give it a try.

Nor was that the end of my slacking. More tomorrow.

Posted by Colin Harvey

First there were MySpace and Facebook; LiveJournal is a more science-based community. Now comes the next generation of social networks, both for readers.

GoodReads is a social networking site for readers. Members can post their opinions and reviews of works that they have read, include rating them. For readers it's attraction is that if you're interested in a book, you can obtain a variety of opinions on the same books. That part overlaps with amazon, but it's much more of a 'club' than amazon is.

Galaxiki is a much more curious site. It's "a web-based virtual and purely fictional galaxy project using wiki technology. The word Galaxiki is a portmanteau of the words galaxy and wiki. Galaxiki consists of over 1 million computer generated stars as well as their planets, moons and other orbital objects which are maintained by the Galaxiki Community."

It also posts links to sci-fi & fantasy books and videos, so in that respect, it might be viewed as a GoodReads for Astronomers. I'm not sure of it's long-term viability, but the world needs more variety -- why should Bebo and the like have it all their own way?

So pop on over to both and take a look.

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

By the time the BBC agreed to revive Doctor Who in 2003, it had been off-air for fourteen years, and the spin-offs had moved into novelizations from Virgin Books and audio programmes featuring Peter Davison and Nicola Bryant, among others.

The BBC moved quickly to retake control of the franchise, and any ‘New’ adventures promptly ceased. A few of the writers, Paul Cornell, Mark Gatiss and Gareth Roberts, were able to gain entrée into the world of screenplay-writing, and not only survived, but in fact prospered. Many more were not so lucky.

In a way this is understandable; the BBC had put a sizeable investment into the series. But the whole point of the Doctor is that he is nine hundred years old, and for every story on screen has had a hundred, even a thousand off-screen.

Given the limitations –budgetary, suitability for ‘family ‘viewing,’ whether they are even able to filmed—it would seem sensible for the BBC, which has an insatiable (if understandable) appetite for spin-off revenue, to actively embrace novel and audio adventures beyond the scope of the TV series.

However, Davies’ recent comments in the (London) Independent newspaper indicate that he has little time for views differing from his own, and the BBC have indicated to other writers that they wish to focus on the current (tenth) Doctor, and not ‘confuse’ the audience. This rather patronizing attitude may change when/if Davies’ moves on, and a new controller takes over the series. In the meantime, a similar situation prevails as when ‘talkies’ replaced silent films, in that established authors find themselves with novels they started before the show’s revival, and subsequently completed, that they are unable to sell.

Let’s hope that the various competing attitudes can find resolution.

Posted by Colin Harvey

By the late 1990's, a clear Who-vian sub-culture had appeared.

Even before Doctor Who went off-air in 1989, Virgin Publishing had applied to publish novelizations; the new line of books called The New Adventures, which featured the Seventh Doctor and Ace ran from 1991. From 1997, later novels featured other companions, notably Bernice Summerfield, who also appeared in a line of Audio CD's. Virgin Publishing also issued The Missing Adventures which featured past Doctors and their companions. These stories take place ‘between’ episodes of the television series.

Fan-fiction is nothing new -- many writers such as Amy Sissons have started as writers of fan-fiction, before gaining the confidence (or the credibility in editor’s eyes) to move onto their own work. Indeed, Star Trek had already shown that a franchise could be kept alive.

What is unusual is the extent of Doctor Who's decentralization ; unlike Star Trek, where Roddenberry retained control before handing over to an heir-designate, Doctor Who has long outlasted its original creators, while the very format -with the Doctor's ability to 'Regenerate' (and therefore change), and his near-immortality- means a much less centralized vision, and therefore both greater creativity, and a greater potential for anarchy.

The BBC finally realized the strength of the series by taking the spin-offs back in house in 1999. At that time, Big Finish Productions began running officially-sanctioned audio plays. The situation continued until 2003, when the BBC announced that it would relaunch Doctor Who on BBC1, in a prime-time Saturday night slot.

Posted by Colin Harvey

One of the pleasures of being a reviewer is that when the summer months come along, you can take your book outside with clear conscience, and work as you sunbathe (or sit under the tree, if you're one of those people that prefers not having wrinkles into your 80s to Vitamin A deficiency).

Books like Greg Egan's Quarantine --to be reviewed in Strange Horizons soon-- and Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic become so much more appealing when you're having to read them with sunglasses to shield your eyes.

OK, gloat over. Sorry about that -- not.

My friend Chris was commenting that a writer's life doesn't sound bad, and he's right. Certainly Kate has observed that I've never been so happy as I have the last year.

A big welcome to anyone who's come over from MySpace, by the way. This will become my default blog from now on, rather than over there. It'll be a little more focussed on books than the MySpace blog, but Chloe and Alice and --of course-- Keynsham will still get a mention from time to time. I'll also be posting more frequently than I was over there.

Until next time.

Abyssinia

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

By 1989, Doctor Who had become an embarrassment to the BBC. Yet, despite all their attempts at a mercy-less killing, the show refused to expire. So in the end, the BBC pulled the plug.

When they finally axed Doctor Who, the men in the suits doubtless expected it's viewers to quietly turn over and ogle Baywatch -or something equally banal- instead.

They should have been warned, by the refusal of the show's viewers to give up before.

Many of us did quietly consign it to the dustbin of oblivion. I'd never recovered from the departure of Sarah-Jane, so to me it's final axing was almost irrelevant.

But then an odd thing happened; over the next few years, I would catch sight of an occasional book, in the library, or a second-hand shop. An inveterate checker of publication dates, I'd discover that these were new books.

What had happened was that many of the fans had decided that if no one else would entertain them, they would entertain themselves. The fans began to write new stories, and many who had earned a livelihood from the show were happy to help out.

Soon, there was a whole new set of Who adventures, much to the surprise of the BBC.

Posted by Colin Harvey

Let's get one thing straight; I'm a fan of the new Doctor Who. I'm an admirer of Russell T. Davies. I haven't yet read any of the spin-off books -although I loved Paul Cornell's vignette for the (london) Daily Telegraph at Christmas, "The Hopes and Fears of All The Years"- although I surely will.

But lately, I've begun to hear another side. Not from the crusty old die-hards who resent any change, but the readers and writers of the last twenty years, some of whom may be the collateral damage of the Who renaissance.

To put this into context. By 1989, Doctor Who was an embarrassment to the BBC. It was self-inflicted in that the budgets never allowed the result to match the writer's vision, and the effects were awful - but who's fault was that, BBC? And the declining viewers were because the BBC themselves had moved the show around so often that it was often pitched against shows it had no hope of competing against.

So the decision to kill the show was in some ways the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What no one at the BBC expected was what happened next.

Posted by Colin Harvey

One of the problems with reviewing is what to do when one has to review a magazine or webzine with whom one has connections.

It's not a problem that I've encountered until the last few days, when I covered the March Strange Horizons. I've been contributing reviews to that particular webzine for the last five years, so I know two members of staff personally, and several of the other contributors via on-line friendships. What to do if I found a real turkey amongst the stories?

Fortunately, I was spared such a dilemma, but in any event, if a story's sub-standard in my opinion, I won't hesitate to call it, although I will always give reasons, and always look for the positives wherever possible.

Both I and the other Strange Horizons contributors are all professional enough to know that however good a story, someone, somewhere won't like it. And if one is a writer on the end of a negative review, one simply does not respond.

It's impossible for any reader to know with absolute certainty what a reviewer's personal agenda is, but the only way for the watchers to be watched is to ensure that they are absolutely above suspicion.

Posted by Colin Harvey

Two sets of awards results have recently been posted:

The 2007 British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) awards were announced March 22, 2008 in London.

Best Novel: Brasyl by Ian McDonald (Gollancz)

Best Short Fiction: "Lighting Out" by Ken MacLeod (from disLocations; Newcon Press)

Best Artwork: "Cracked World" by Andy Bigwood (cover of disLocations)

BSFA Fiftieth Anniversary Award: Best Novel of 1958: Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss.

The 2007 Bram Stoker Award winners were presented March 30, 2008

Best Novel: The Missing by Sarah Langan

Best First Novel: Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Best Long Fiction: "Afterward, There Will Be A Hallway" by Gary Braunbeck

Best Short Fiction: "The Gentle Brush of Wings " by David Niall Wilson

Posted by Colin Harvey

The Highs:

The panels.

Particularly

i. Everyone's A Critic with Niall Harrison and Paul Raven, Reviews Editors both -of Strange Horizons and Interzone respectively, Tony Lee and Andrew Drucker, reviewer and blogger respectively, and an intelligent and courteous audience.

ii. The UK SF Short Fiction Scene, with Harrison (again), Jetse de Vries, one of the Fiction Editors at Interzone, and the irrepressible John Meaney. Terrific fun.

iii. Also (as one of the audience) Terraforming Venus with Professor Nik Whitehead of the University of Akureyri lecturing, and delivering an intelligent, articulate and above all fun look at the subject.

And meeting lots of people I 'know' online in the flesh for the first time, plus a few idols of my youth.

The Lows:

Not many, actually.

One of them was that I stupidly double-booked myself, but with the aid of the con volunteers (who did a tremendous job) we managed to salvage the situation. So to all panel attendees, check, double-check and check again your timings.

The other was that I ended up doing a book-signing session opposite panels with the GoHs in, and nobody -but nobody- came. Such are the perils of signing sessions. To any other new authors, I'd say "don't do it until you have a fairly high profile."

But the lows were far outweighed by the highs. I can hardly wait for Bradford 09.

Posted by Colin Harvey

It’s with a sense of embarassment that I’ve realized that it’s a week since I last posted here. Part of that is my home situation, with my wife and I having to re-align our work practices. My dog had a stroke over the weekend, and that's taken most of my time, including having to cancel my appearance at P-Con V in Dublin. So, for those who are reading this expecting something about reading SF, my apologies.

Part of that re-adjustment was post-Eastercon. It took a huge amount of time to prepare for five panels, and I’ve been coping with the fall-out of being away from home since then, but I’m finally back in the land of the living. Conventions are an artificial environment, and sometimes re-adjusting to 'real' life takes time. Suddenly there's no room service, the dishes are no longer magically whisked away, and the washing machine doesn't load itself.

Back to a proper blog next time, including a summation on Eastercon.

Until then, be good.

Colin

Posted by Colin Harvey

Sunday’s panels included a topical discussion about electronic publishing.

Cory Doctorow argued that trying to restrict the dissemination of art via mechanisms such as Creative Commons Licences is all but immoral. This isn't a new argument. When the panel moderator asked what could be done to convince doubters of the advantages of publishing on-line, Patrick Hayden Nielsen argued that no-one needs convincing; that “It’s inevitable.”

Jo Fletcher mooted that while it’s inevitable, her main concern is how to ensure that authors still get paid for their work, in the same way that they get paid today. But Doctorow argued that looking to ensure that authors get a guaranteed income for life as a means of engaging a solution to the e-book question is the fastest way to ensure that there is no solution.

Paul Raven stated that he sees the role of publisher is to act as a filter to weed out work that’s sub-standard. Doctorow disputed this. “There are already people out there filtering already.”

What seems clear is that for readers and writers alike, the future is going to be very, very different.

Posted by Colin Harvey

Saturday brought one of those chance encounters that make con-attending worthwhile. I wandered into a panel titled ‘Transforming Venus’ that I hoped would be about Terraforming, rather than a study of Pamela Sargent’s novels (not that I have anything against the lady – rather that Terraforming is one of my pet interests at present).

The presenter was late, and I nearly left, but at about ten past the hour we started, so I’m glad now that I didn’t. The session was indeed about making Venus more earth-like, and the presenter turned out to be a Vice-Dean at the University of Akureyri in Northern Iceland.

The presentation itself was full of good, hard science with some SF tossed in, and was excellent.

But because she had started late, she ran out of time, so invited anyone interested to come along to the bar afterwards for a chat. I did so, and mentioned that I’d been in Akureyri six months earlier.

We ended up joining a larger group for a curry and talking Iceland most of the evening. I now have both a good friend and someone who I can bounce ideas off about Terraforming – she can tell me when I’m talking rubbish!

Posted by Colin Harvey

The UK national SF convention is this year being held at Heathrow, about a mile from the airport. It's my first con, so I don't know whether it's bigger than in previous years, though I somehow suspect it is. While not on the scale of Worldcon, it's at least twice -maybe three times- the size of any other UK convention.

Friday is spent mostly gathering, opening up the dealer's room, and getting used to the lie of the land. However, by the evening, programming was fully under way (although one panel had a member from Holland who didn't even have time to register before appearing on the panel!).

Programming events included 'Coping with Rejection,' which although it sounded as if it could be a short programme ("Keep writing, and keep submitting" as one member put it), caught fire with the audience, most of them unpublished writers, who were interested to hear editor's and experienced writers experiences.

Also illuminating was 'The UK Short Fiction Market,' which the programme text wrote up as 'dying.' While there were grounds for concern, writers like John Meaney and editors like Jetse de Vries of Interzzone and Niall Harrison of Strange Horizons had some interesting and pungent comments to make. Not so much that the UK short fiction market is dying as it is evolving, although no one quite knows which way it will evolve, for good or bad.

Posted by Colin Harvey

In the mid-1970s, as I omnivorously read anything fantastic, Michael Moorcock seemed to be everywhere; he edited eight reprint Best-of-New-Worlds’ anthologies, and as the magazine folded, ten more original paperbacks. At the same time he was churning out umpteen novels a year, albeit many so short that they were almost novellas, but nonetheless, there they were, all handsomely illustrated; The Books of Corum; The Nomad of Time; Count Brass were just a few of them.

All that and playing with the rock band ‘Hawkwind’-- how much more rock ’n’ roll could a writer’s life be to a teenager? It’s in no small part due to Moorcock that I wanted to be a writer. What I didn’t know was that he was factory-farming those novels to pay off the debts he had accumulated as New Worlds’ editor – the other side of writing, that of financial hardship.

He continued to write, and often to experiment, making him an uncomfortable bedfellow for many genre die-hards, and at times almost invisible to SF readers, especially as he achieved literary respectability with two Guardian Fiction Prizes.

Now, finally, there seems to be a rapprochement in the air, with the SFWA bestowing the latest Damon Knight Grand Master Award upon him. Welcome back, Mr. Moorcock.

Posted by Colin Harvey

The last of the Giants of Golden Age SF passed away in the early hours of March 19, in Sri Lanka. There will be a profile of him posted later this week. This isn’t the forum for a biography. Even an article doesn’t have the space to do ninety years of life justice.

The very first adult book that I read was Earthlight, (for Clarke) a minor novel; yet containing one important detail – that in space, sound does not carry. It taught me a very early lesson; that sometimes the truth is less popular than lies. For what it said was that all the TV shows with whooshing spaceships were there for one important reason, and one reason only; dramatic effect.

Years came and went, and Clarke fell out of fashion, but as I’ve grown older I’ve realized that what appears to be an absence of style is in itself a style, and I’ve returned to the words of my old friend (although, sadly, I never met him) with more tolerant eyes. I’ve been reading his Collected Stories on and off for months–one shouldn’t hurry through a man’s life—and the story I’ve reached is the novelette version of…Earthlight.

Posted by Colin Harvey

At a recent convention, one of the panel discussions was ‘Which of your favourite books or stories would you like to see filmed?’

My first reaction was to think that most films are shoddy eviscerated imitations of the books they’re adapted from, but that would have made for a short panel.

So, assuming that we could have any actor(s) and any director, and that the book would be sympathetically adapted, I turned my mind to it.

I’ll post my own ideas separately, but I was impressed with one long-term fan who picked Robert A. Heinlein’s classic novella ‘The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag.’

Imagine a black and white, noir-esque film, in which Jonathan Hoag, a connoisseur of art and fine dining comes to the husband and wife team of Randall & Craig Detective Agency in Chicago with the request that they follow him; when asked, at an evening dinner, what he does for a living, he realized that he had no idea what he does during the day.

The mystery begins immediately – and to say any more would be to ruin the plot.

It has romance, chills and a mystery. A great choice and one I wished I’d thought of!

Posted by Colin Harvey

Exeter University SF Society have been running their annual con