Posted 9:07 PM by Ken

Coming Attractions

Last week I checked the proof pages of The Night Sessions, discovering towards the end a misplaced subordinate clause that - rather like an HTML tag left hanging - turned the climax into gibberish. Now that's fixed, the book is on course for UK publication in August.

A few years ago, I got a commission to write a short story for an anthology called The Cthulhuian Singularity. The idea for the anthology was sparked by Charles Stross's story 'A Colder War', which mashed Singularity memes with Lovecraftian horror. That story was to be included in the anthology - the rest were to be original explorations of a similar theme. So I went ahead and wrote 'The Vorkuta Event', a story quite unlike anything I'd written before or have written since. I found it remarkable how adopting a voice - in this case a mannered, lettered, slightly archaic voice - and a technique (the story within a story, both narrators being less than reliable) made the story flow easily, almost inevitably, as if some strange force had taken possession of my fingers.

For various unspeakable reasons that man was not meant to know, the publication of this anthology has dragged like a shoggoth's tail. I'm delighted to report that the shoggoth now has a firecracker under its ass, and the eldritch volume is expected to burst on an uncomprehending world late this year or early next, when the stars are right. You can reserve your copy by buying it here.

I also have (fairly short) short stories in Seeds of Change (forthcoming August 2008) and The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three (forthcoming 2009).

Posted 9:13 PM by Ken

The rifles of Rome

I live where Rome stopped: on the south bank of the Firth of Forth. It's strange to think that there was once nothing but Roman empire all the way from here to the Sahara. Richard Carrier has recently blogged about, inter alia, a detailed history of one weapon that helped them do it: the catapult.

In her study of this machine there are two things Rihll accomplishes of particular note (apart from producing a fully up-to-date synthesis of the whole of catapult history that reflects all the new developments in the field that few careful observers may already have known about from otherwise scattered reading). First, she establishes beyond doubt that catapult technology advanced considerably and importantly during the early Roman Empire (something that had often been denied), including the best case yet that they developed the metal-framed inswinger catapult, greatly magnifying power output (and leaving many modern reconstructions obsolete). Secondly, she also establishes beyond doubt the widespread use of small hand-held torsion catapults. In other words, the ancient equivalent of rifles (examples with three-foot stocks, for example, being commonplace), and even handguns (with models as small as nine or ten inches in total length).

The latter is perhaps the most astonishing. Expert observers will already have heard of growing evidence of Roman advances, but might have missed entirely the evidence of small catapults--yet as Rihll reveals, the evidence is surprisingly vast, if you know where to look for it, and what to look for. These weapons were apparently abundantly supplied in the Roman legions, and were so powerful that a typical stone-throwing smallarm could penetrate a human body with a lead bullet at a hundred yards [...]

And yes, the Romans did use lead bullets.

Posted 2:08 PM by Ken

Wonders of the market

Donald MacKenzie muses on end-of-the-world trades:

Last November, I spent several days in the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, in banks’ headquarters in the City and in the pale wood and glass of a hedge fund’s St James’s office trying to understand the credit crisis that had erupted over the previous four months. I became intrigued by an oddity that I came to think of as the end-of-the-world trade. The trade is the purchase of insurance against what would in effect be the failure of the modern capitalist system. It would take a cataclysm – around a third of the leading investment-grade corporations in Europe or half those in North America going bankrupt and defaulting on their debt – for the insurance to be paid out.

I asked one investment banker what might cause half of North America’s top corporations to default. No ordinary economic recession or natural disaster short of an asteroid strike could do it: no hurricane, for example, and not even ‘the big one’, a catastrophic earthquake devastating California. All he could think of was ‘a revolutionary Marxist government in Washington’. That’s not a likely scenario, yet the cost of insuring against it had shot up ten-fold. Normally one can buy $10 million of end-of-the-world insurance for between two and three thousand dollars a year. By early last November, the prices quoted were between twenty and thirty thousand, and even then it was difficult to buy in quantity – at least, said the banker, ‘not from anyone you trusted’.

You can insure against the revolution? Who knew? The rest of the article is less intriguing, though if you've always wanted to know what a ‘single-factor Gaussian copula’ is, here's your chance.

Posted 6:22 PM by Ken

Harvest of Stars

John Scalzi has harvested a bushel of one-star Amazon reviews of his books, and thrown down a challenge to other writers:

Post your one-star (or otherwise negative) Amazon reviews, if you have them, and you probably do. Oh, go on. Own your one-star reviews, man. And then, you know. Get past them. If you’re lucky, some of them might actually be fun to read.

Charlie Stross has stepped up to the plate.

My turn:

The Star Fraction

'The storyline was very badly developed with nothing properly explained. The plot totally incomprehensible and the characters shallow in the extreme. Avoid at all costs.'

'His writing style is juvenile with rushed plotlines, very poor characterisations (especially of women) and a propensity for moving the plot in very unexpected directions that I can only assume came from reading too many Joe Haldeman novels. ... If you are a 30-something billy no mates working in IT then you'll love this book, but for the rest of us , these books show that being a mate of Iain banks does not make you a writer.'

'The most interesting character was a gun; the gun didn't get enough lines.'

The Cassini Division

'a mishmash of poorly-conceived and ill-developed ideas. The most startling one to me was that genocide is A-OK, as long as it's done by the right people to further socialism. ... I wish I had used the time I spent with this book to do something more enjoyable, like clean up those oil spots on my garage floor.'

'I think I'll have to go back to the remaining Terry Pratchet or Aaron Elkinson's I've yet too read. Idealism has its place, unfortunately it just doesn't cut it with sci-fi.'

'Lotta gratuitist drunkin' sex. Silly and sophomoric ideas and dialogue. Ammoral people and actions. This is just a bad book, written poorly and confusingly.'

'the future utopia is an unlikeable place filled with unlikeable people doing unlikeable things. In the end, one finds the Texas-inspired New Mars a much more appealing place than the hivelike utopia the main character tries hard to defend. ... I threw this book away without reading the last 40 pages. Oh yes, and I'm never going to trust a Salon.com book review ever again.

The Sky Road

'If this book did not have a cover and I was asked what genre it belonged to, I would have said "romance". It is sappy and slow with very transparent characters and ultimately not believable. ... If you like books with crisp plots and lots of ideas, then look for something else.'

Cosmonaut Keep

'If publishers were serious about their claim that the best style is one that is not noticed, Ken MacLeod would never have been published. ... Cosmonaut Keep is a Herculean effort, in which MacLeod assures that the audience is always conscious of his effort. ... If, as the cover proclaims, MacLeod represents a SF revolution unto himself, the genre is dead.'

'What happened Ken? Where did the characterisation go? Where is the grit and realism? Please go back to writing adult SF.'

Dark Light

'If you're interested in how socialism works or the benefits of different styles of democracy, read this book. If you are looking for characters confused by their gender identity (are you a man or a woman? It depends on your actions), you may like this book. If you want interesting SCI FI, however, steer clear.

Engine City

'choppy, episodic writing, with some of the chapters reading as though they have been lifted from drafts for short stories ... I also have problems with Macleod's science (I'll pass over his unconvincing politics).'

'The first book of this trilogy was an improvement on his previous writing, putting him almost at the same level at the earlier (weaker) books of Iain M Banks. By the second book he's slipped into the middle tier of writers, the third book sometimes reads like a satire of the first two.'

Newton's Wake

'I'm giving the book two stars instead of one because its imbecilic vision is tolerably well executed.'

'The characters were annoying. The obscure plot was annoying. The sodding gags were annoying. I thought you couldn't get more daft than pot-smoking aliens. You did.'

Learning the World

'only the aliens have much personality, and even then, not much: they seem like fictional versions of MacLeod and his pub-frequenting Scottish political chit-chat buddies (the same set that appear in every single novel MacLeod has ever written) - the only difference is these guys have wings, and don't actually live in Scotland, just a place that resembles it... MacLeod is either past him prime, or just loafing, and he shouldn't be rewarded with your hard-earned dollars for this disappointment.'

'I found this title very hard work to finish. I found this title very hard work to begin.'

The Execution Channel

'By the time a reader is one-third of the way through the book, he should be able to at least have an idea of what is going on and know who some of the characters are. But you won't get that here. I have moved on to better things, and you probably should, too.'

'Typical USA bashing from a liberal European SciFi author.

The storyline is that a Scotland military base gets nuked, and some "strange going's on" before the nuking were witnessed by a bunch of leftist wackos hanging around the base. But, in reality, who would bother with nuking Scotland, and who cares as far as this story goes?'

I was surprised to find how bracing (and amusing) it is to do this. Go for it, guys and gals! Pick up that Scalzi space-gauntlet. It may not do much for your sales, but it's good for the soul.

Posted 12:56 PM by Ken

From scenes like these

Feorag, Charlie Stross's wife, reminds him that she has heard this one before.

Posted 10:53 AM by Ken

Conspirator denounces conspiracy theory

Ayman al-Zawahri, deputy leader of Al-Qaida, has blamed 9/11 conspiracy theories on a conspiracy to discredit the real conspiracy, Al-Qaida. He also threatened further attacks and, on a more ecumenical note, blamed the "Western Crusader world" for global warming. (Via.)

Posted 11:36 AM by Ken

Little Brother

In Australia I read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, an advance reading copy of which was kindly lent to me by Farah Mendlesohn, who has reviewed it. It's a very good book, as everyone is saying.

It's also a useful book. Remember the scene in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress where Manny sketches a structure for an underground organization? Now imagine that, done properly. With X-boxes.

Posted 12:47 PM by Ken

Back, I'm well

This morning our luggage came home, a week almost to the minute after we did. So now I feel I've really returned from Australia, and have no excuse for not catching up. I was in Australia for Swancon, followed by some signings, interviews and research, not to mention R&R. Swancon was a joy and I may write about it later. Likewise about the phone interview with the Sunday Herald, during which I wandered about in the dark talking on my mobile, very close to a sign that a day or two later I found read: WARNING! ACHTUNG! Crocodiles inhabit this area ...

While I was away, 'Lighting Out' won the BSFA Award in the short story category, and The Execution Channel was shortlisted for the Prometheus Award.