The Early Days of a Better Nation

Saturday, May 09, 2015



Coming Attractions

Interested in writing science fiction and/or fantasy? Michael Cobley and I are teaching a short course from 1 pm Thursday 13 May to noon Sunday 17 May at Monaick Mhor, the creative writing centre in the Highlands near Inverness. The centre is comfortable, accessible, spacious and beautifully situated. Though we already have a healthy number of bookings, a few places are still available. So if you're interested, book now.

Later this month, on Friday 29 May I'll be reading from and talking about the poems of Iain Banks at Aberdeen University's May Festival. I'll also be signing copies of the book, which at Iain's insistence includes some poems of my own.

After that my diary is reassuringly blank until the Edinburgh Book Festival in August, which is just as well because I'm writing the second volume of a space opera trilogy, having just recently delivered the first to the tender mercies of my brilliant editor. It's all rebel robots and walking dead space mercenaries in an extrasolar posthuman conflict, and therefore something of a shift from my recent focus on the near future.

My work to date is the topic of a forthcoming seminar at Crooked Timber, where some very bright and sharp critics dissect the books and I pick over the resulting anatomical diagrams (usually to explain where what has been charitably read as a deep engagement with a significant body of rigorous thought has in fact been gleaned from, but them's the breaks.)

Update: Crooked Timber seminar posts and my response now linked to here.

4 Comments:

"Any thoughts on the Labour wipeout in Scotland Ken?"

He asked, mischievously.

I suppose I'd be silent on the recent - and deserved - destruction of the Labour Party in Scotland too if I'd stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Tories last year. Like Ken. Heh!

I've not been silent. Two posts down, I've written in no uncertain terms about the Labour Party's rejection in Scotland. The election result in Scotland has simply borne that out.

If you want to comment, please do so there, or under any post I may yet write on the election wipe-out. Meanwhile, any further off-topic comments in this thread will be deleted.

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