The Early Days of a Better Nation

Saturday, July 31, 2010



Onward and upward

My son Michael MacLeod (aka Young Master Early, but I'll have to stop calling him that) has a new job. Needless to say, I'm very proud of him. He's worked hard to get there: studying for his HND at Telford, slogging his guts out on the Wee County News, being a founding reporter on the Allanwater News, and then working two years with the Deadline Press and Picture Agency in Edinburgh - where his stories and photos have appeared in major UK dailies. Along the way he's seen a lot of life, including some of the worst of it, without ever becoming jaded or cynical. He's built up an impressive range of contacts and has a good nose for stories - and a good eye for pictures.

So ... congratulations, Michael!

And watch this space.

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Thursday, July 29, 2010



Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943

What it says. Go look.

Thanks to Shawn Raiford for the pointer.

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Tuesday, July 20, 2010



Plaster of Salt Lake City

In Iain Banks's difficult second album, the novel Walking on Glass, there's a passing reference to 'plaster of Salt Lake City' - like plaster of Paris, but less exciting. Samuel R Delany's review of the book was titled, if I remember right: 'Like science fiction, but less exciting'.

The most cutting review so far of The Restoration Game describes it as like 'Iain Banks, some of his older mainstream fiction, with one big downside, it wasn't as good.'

I think I can live with that.

Liviu Siciu at Fantasy Book Critic also references Banks, but has a much more positive take on the book: ' ... after reading the book, I have to say that it quite surpassed my expectations. [...] I found myself hooked by the narration of Lucy Stone and I *knew* this was the book I must read before anything else.'

James Lovegrove at FT.com: 'MacLeod’s latest reads like something Le Carré might write if he’d gorged on the works of Philip K. Dick.'

I'm sure my editor at Orbit will be rubbing his hands at that one. He's already picked out some good quotes from the reviews, and in the same post includes this very, very serious video interview with me:

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Saturday, July 17, 2010



The SFX Book Club

I've just had an acceptance for my fourth contribution to this series of 700-word reviews of SF classics: this time, it's on James Blish's Cities in Flight. You can read PDFs of all 49 of the series so far here, and they're pretty addictive. And if you're looking for a reading list of classic SF, this is a good place to start - though it could do with a lot more of (and by) women writers.

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Tuesday, July 13, 2010



Something to brighten your day

Eerie video animation of nuclear explosions from 1945 to 1998. [Added 17/7/10] There are a lot more of them than you probably think.
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Implausible television series

Now that we're all stuck in the one with the Black president and the flying killer robots, there's a certain melancholy comfort in realising that earlier generations had to live through even more unbelievable story arcs. (Via.)

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Friday, July 02, 2010



Two reviews of The Restoration Game


I'm very pleased to see that SFX, whose self-description as 'the Earth's greatest sci-fi and fantasy magazine' is far too modest, has a very nice review of The Restoration Game. (One small spoiler.) The Green Man Review is likewise enthusiastic.

And here's a better link to the Scotland on Sunday review by Stuart Kelly, who says:
Stornoway-born Ken MacLeod's The Restoration Game, like his previous novels The Execution Channel and The Night Sessions, are works of science fiction so worryingly close to reality that he may well be hailed as a prophet on Lewis.
I think a symbolic rather than a literal reading of this particular sentence is called for. Being hailed as a prophet on Lewis could be quite disquieting.

Oh, and if you'd like a signed/personalised copy, Mike Calder at Transreal has the goods, so drop him a line.

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