This week I had the rare pleasure of being invited to talk to the members of IO, Glasgow University's science fiction society that's been running on and off since the early Eighties. I read a bit from Marauder, then spent quite some time answering questions and talking about the writing life. All in all, a nice change from being stuck behind a desk. Someone asked me how I'd feel if I sold a novel to Hollywood and they adapted it into an unforgivably terrible movie. I told them I'd cry, but at least I'd be crying on a big bed made of money. That got a big laugh. I also left a big pile of freebies exhumed from the cupboard whence all my complimentary copies have been residing lo! these many years, and they descended on them like wolves on a wounded caribou.
Mike Cobley's doing his own spiel for them in a couple of weeks, and in fact I ran into him at a gig the next day - the gig in question being Hawkwind. It's the first gig I've been to in three years, and the last one I was at was...also Hawkwind. It was glorious, but the stage set, dancers and animated backdrops remind me that Hawkwind have always been a kind of live-action cartoon, who seem at times more like they should be a fictional outfit somewhere in the background of a Richard Curtis movie, with Rhys Hughes playing a former member. However, their sound is entirely unique. If you have Spotify nearby and fancy a recommendation, try Hall of the Mountain Grill, particularly Psychedelic Warlords.
It is impossible not to love a band that write songs with titles like Psychedelic Warlords.
In other news, I note with passing interest that Scotland has gained yet another pro novelist. I haven't met Libby McGugan, but other members of my former writing group have, and her novel The Eidolon looks like my kind of thing. You can read about it here, and she had a launch for her debut novel at Waterstones last night.
I don't talk often enough about what I have or haven't been reading. I just re-read Kage Baker's Garden of Iden as preparation for (finally) reading the follow-up Sky Coyote, and it's exactly as brilliant as I remember it. You should all read it. I'd also recommend Nick Mamatas' Love is the Law, with its mix of nihilism, politics, punk, Thelemic philosophy and good-old-fashioned murder, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Mike Cobley's doing his own spiel for them in a couple of weeks, and in fact I ran into him at a gig the next day - the gig in question being Hawkwind. It's the first gig I've been to in three years, and the last one I was at was...also Hawkwind. It was glorious, but the stage set, dancers and animated backdrops remind me that Hawkwind have always been a kind of live-action cartoon, who seem at times more like they should be a fictional outfit somewhere in the background of a Richard Curtis movie, with Rhys Hughes playing a former member. However, their sound is entirely unique. If you have Spotify nearby and fancy a recommendation, try Hall of the Mountain Grill, particularly Psychedelic Warlords.
It is impossible not to love a band that write songs with titles like Psychedelic Warlords.
In other news, I note with passing interest that Scotland has gained yet another pro novelist. I haven't met Libby McGugan, but other members of my former writing group have, and her novel The Eidolon looks like my kind of thing. You can read about it here, and she had a launch for her debut novel at Waterstones last night.
I don't talk often enough about what I have or haven't been reading. I just re-read Kage Baker's Garden of Iden as preparation for (finally) reading the follow-up Sky Coyote, and it's exactly as brilliant as I remember it. You should all read it. I'd also recommend Nick Mamatas' Love is the Law, with its mix of nihilism, politics, punk, Thelemic philosophy and good-old-fashioned murder, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
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