The Early Days of a Better Nation

Tuesday, May 20, 2008



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).

8 Comments:

"...as if some strange force had taken possession of my fingers".

Not dialectical materialism, by any chance?

Now all we need is a proper short story collection from you.

Because, although the Cthulhuian Singularity looks very interesting, $75 seems a little much....

Ass Mr Mcleod?
Is "arse" too coarse for your gentle readers?

It's an American shoggoth. Thus 'ass'.

P.M - dialectical materialism is in it, all right.

Any plans for US publication?

Johan: it's currently being considered by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor at Tor. fingers crossed ...

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