The Early Days of a Better Nation

Thursday, November 22, 2012



Yet another event

Most of my recent blog posts have been about upcoming events or articles published elsewhere. I hope to redress this fairly soon. Meanwhile, here's another.

The Scottish Book Trust's imminent Book Week Scotland includes a Pop Up Festival on December 1st at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, featuring among much else me and Iain Banks, in conversation with Stuart Kelly.
An hour of fascinating conversation featuring Banks’ dazzling new Culture novel, The Hydrogen Sonata, and Ken MacLeod’s Intrusion, a clever, frightening and dystopian vision of the future that has drawn comparison with Orwell’s 1984. Chaired by Stuart Kelly.

This event is part of Scottish Book Trust’s day of celebrations at The Mitchell Library on Saturday 1st December.
Even if you've already seen the well-known Banks and MacLeod double act - usually involving incomprehensibly inconsistent recollections of every significant event in our closely linked literary lives and long personal friendship - you'll see something new as we are publicly dissected by Stuart Kelly, the best-read man in Scotland and a dab hand with the scalpel.
3 comments | Permanent link to this post

Thursday, November 15, 2012



Where Rockets Burn Through


For the second time in forty years, I'm a properly published poet, and in very distinguished company at that. Anthologies of science fiction poetry are almost as infrequent: this is the first I've seen since Frontier of Going and Holding Your Eight Hands came out in the Seventies. Edited by scholar and poet Russell Jones, introduced by Alasdair Gray, and inspired by (and featuring) the science fiction poetry of the late great Scottish Makar Edwin Morgan, Where Rockets Burn Through should rise higher and travel farther than its predecessors.

Free launch events: Edinburgh, Thursday 29 Nov and London, Thursday 6 December.

The Edinburgh event will feature readings by several local writers, including me. You have been warned.

Thursday 29 November, 6.00pm (Update - not 6.30, as I had before!)
Blackwell’s 53-59 South Bridge Edinburgh
FREE

Labels: , , , ,

2 comments | Permanent link to this post

Tuesday, November 13, 2012



The Soul of Man after Socialism

I have another article up at the new online magazine Aeon, this time elaborating on some points about socialism and (post)humanism that I've made earlier.

Labels: , ,

4 comments | Permanent link to this post

Home