Worldcon is looming closer, and I just got my panel schedule through: just two, but they sound good. The first is "Building a Future World and Blowing it Up: The Pleasures of Destruction", on the Saturday at two, which sounds fun. And also "Improving your Writing" at half three on the Sunday, which is a bit more open-ended, by the sound of it. Plus, if you come to the first panel, you'll see me looking a little gobsmacked, because I'll be sharing a table with Larry Niven.

Got some good news - Tor managed to secure an offer from a Russian publishing company (AST), for both Angel Stations and Against Gravity. Which means some extra money sometime in the near future, which is also nice. Hooray for me!

Years and years and years ago, a guy from GSFWC called Fergus Bannon wrote a book called Judgement and mailed it to an agent, maybe two agents, or maybe it was an agent and a publisher. Whatever. Couple of weeks later the manuscript comes back with one of those 'thanks, but we'll skip it' notes tucked inside, so Fergus tucks it back in a drawer.

Fifteen years pass.

Now, this is not unusual. There's a lot of people who do this kind of thing - spend a year writing a novel: researching it: redrafting it: then they send it out. And when it gets rejected a couple of times, or maybe even only once, what they do is stick it in a drawer and forget about it. In some cases, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, since often the manuscript isn't anything great. The mark of a real writer of course, is when you go and write another, anyway. And if that doesn't sell, you write another. And another. And keep going until eventually - hopefully - you sell.

This, of course, isn't what most people do. Writing a book then forgetting about it, regardless of its intrinsic merits and demerits, is probably very common indeed. About ten years ago I got a copy of Judgement from Fergus and read through it. I really liked it. At this time, Fergus had had a couple of professional sales under his belt, including a story called 'Burning Brightly' in Interzone, which perfectly encapsulated his less than optimistic view of the world: so it wasn't like he was a total beginner.

There was one big problem with Fergus's book, though. It was set before the fall of the Soviet Union, and in certain respects was very political. It also had scenes set in Apartheid South Africa. Then the USSR went down in flames, along with Apartheid. Oops. Maybe not so surprising it got stuffed in a drawer, then.

Except when I read the book, I realised that the vast majority of the 'political' scenes existed primarily as 'intercut' scenes focusing on events that reflected on the theme of the book without necessarily involving the actual central plot too deeply at all. I was sure there was a way to fix these.

We talked about it and Fergus was up for it - except I'd have to be the one doing the edits: Fergus' day job - and I'm not allowed to say what it is - is one of considerable responsibility, and his life's moved on since his writing days enough so that there's not a chance in hell he's either going to have the time or - any longer - the inclination. But I felt the book really, really deserved some kind of a chance. It seemed like a damn shame for it to just disappear into a drawer and be forgotten about. I figured I could screw around with it (with permission granted) and fix those scenes that locked it into past events: and it sure as hell wasn't the kind of (hard sf) book that could function as historical fiction.

Except then I got a book deal and time was very, very limited. But I've just finished off some work and realised I had some spare time and, over the past couple of weeks, took the opportunity to go through the thing and make some fast edits. I'm hoping - really hoping - this'll be enough, although I figure I probably need to dive in there a couple more times and jazz up the detail, research wise.

Then I'll probably pass it around to a couple of people and see what they think.

I got an email from Cheryl Morgan a couple of weeks ago (much appreciated, Cheryl) that had itself been forwarded from the Glasgow Worldcon people, asking for contributions towards an article for local paper the Evening Times. Turns out that the local tv station, STV, were putting together a drama set in Glasgow, in thirty or forty years time.

Oh dear, I thought. When it comes to television drama produced up here, north of the border, the results aren't always promising. BBC Scotland has a series called River City, appalling enough to just about edge into the 'Ed Wood' category of so-bad-it's-funny. As for STV ... well, I have distant memories of a drama they did about the Loch Ness monster many, many years ago, for which the producer, scriptwriter and cast should have been publicly tarred and feathered. As for locally produced 'genre' drama apart from that, the best there's been - the only there's been - was Sea of Souls. This was actually quite a worthy attempt at doing something more X-Files-y. It didn't work, either, or at least the first series I saw didn't: I never saw the second.

Curiously enough, by chance I got chatting to someone peripherally involved with the creation of Sea of Souls. They first thing they did when the name came up was to apologise for it, then to reassure me the second series was much better. I hadn't even said anything.

So anyway, there were a couple of questions relating to the STV show, called, apparently, IM. What did I think Glasgow might be like in thirty years, what's the future of publishing, etc etc: fifty words or less. So I knocked together some rampant bullshit and emailed it to the paper five minutes later. The article appeared, apparently, on Friday, and somebody gave me a copy of it earlier today. Photo - not great. I'm a 'sci fi' writer - yech. Fifty words trimmed down to about three so, hey, they must really have been impressed!

What also strikes me as slightly worrying is the ease with which IM has slipped under the general radar. If it wasn't for Cheryl's email, I would never even have heard of it. It was on on Thursday, but given that I had no idea when it would be on, or what it was even called, surprise, I missed it.

In fact, I just found the stv website for IM, which turns out to be part of a series of specially commissioned one-off dramas, including - now I'm really kicking myself - one based on a short story by Charlie Stross! Aargh!

Now that I really did want to see.

Exactly how the international book market strictly operates in terms of rights in the US as compared to the rest of the world continues to flummox me. I've brought American editions of books by British writers through British Amazon. Similarly, there are many British editions of books by British or American or other writers available through the American Amazon, for American customers, regardless of whether those people have publishing deals in the US itself.

Go figure.

Nonetheless, I was delighted to discover (thanks, Dad) that the mass market paperback of Angel Stations, published in Britain sometime very soon, will apparently be available to buy through Amazon US from June 30th. Naturally, this pleases me very much, as back when Angel Stations first came out quite a few people in the States asked me, via this blog and elsewhere, if they'd be able to buy it over there. Well, admittedly with a little delay, it seems you can. You can find it here.

When I get the chance, I'll be sticking the link below the image to the left along with the others.

I gave into my better instincts the other day and finally bought myself a new computer. A laptop, this time, a piece of technology I've been coveting for years. I have a (very) old one I picked up on Ebay from several years ago, but it had all the dynamism and operatibility of a brick, apart from being slow and cranky as hell, so somehow it never seemed to really count(even though I did write considerable portions of Angel Stations on it). What I wanted was something smooth, efficient and sleek. I finally settled on an end-of-line Advent from the local PC World for just about bang on five hundred quid. It's a bit of a compromise in some ways, since what I really want is an Apple (better operating system, less prone to crashing, hardier design), but they're way out of my price range, so ...

Thing is, I'd been paying little attention to the DVD function which is now pretty much ubiquitous in the pc market these days: I think the average number of films I rent a year is probably about, eh, one (apart from going to the cinema, which I do enjoy). But for the hell of it, I did watch a DVD on the pc and found it a rather engaging experience. Apart from the fact it's in widescreen, there's something about having your face relatively close to the screen: I suspect, as an acquaintance suggested, it creates an intimacy not dissimilar to that experienced when actually in a cinema. Or that's the theory, anyway.

Workwise, I have about ten thousand words of a new outline away with my agent, Dorothy Lumley, who I finally got to meet in the flesh a couple of weeks ago when she was in town for a 'crime writer's weekend'. We ended up in Miss Cranston's Tea Room, a very elegant and Victorian affair near the city centre. Some people seem a bit surprised when they find out I've never actually met my agent since she took me on board in the late 'Nineties, but it never struck me as something I should do. In fact, it never struck me in any way at all: I'd assumed most of these things, by necessity, were handled at a distance. I only realised I was a bit weird in that respect when some friends themselves got agents and hurried off in planes or trains to meet and greet in the flesh.

Names of books, names of books ... first, it was called Slow Burn; then it was Baskerville Station (dumped because it made it sound like it was set in the Angel Stations universe, which it wasn't); then it was Baskerville Point. And now, I'm thinking, Convergent, as in convergent evolution. And before you reach for the Amazon link in your browser, I checked it already. It turns up a couple of times, but in the form of variations - 'Convergence', for instance, which is close, or 'Convergent Series', ditto. But nothing simply called 'Convergent', which would be a good name, for two reasons: a) it sounds right, and b)it touches neatly on the theme of the story. So it'll do, at least until I inevitably go to a con and trip over a box in the dealer's room filled with books already called 'Convergent'.

I tripped over one of the most insanely useful sites I've seen in a good while: http://www.freesfonline.de/. Particularly under the 'recommended' link on the front page. It lists free (as distinct from 'pirated') science fiction available to read on the internet.

Although I'm still waiting for those little Japanese book-shaped electronic readers which actually reproduce the sensation of reading words off a printed page to come on the market here before I'm convinced of the viability of the e-publishing revolution, it's this kind of thing for which the internet can be insanely useful: tracking down excellent writing that would otherwise require tracking down hard-to-find anthologies, most of whom would stand a good chance of being out of print. The site actually serves as an excellent primer for some of the very best sf around for those looking to find out exactly why people like myself became sufficiently obsessive about the form in their youth that they felt driven to spend large chunks of their adult life creating their own.

People talk about writer's block, but they rarely talk about cover block. This involves spending up to a couple of years working on a piece of writing, then your publisher wraps it in something that tightens every sphincter in your body and makes your brain feel like it's about to commit a kamikaze death leap out of one of your ears.

Now, I'm fortunate in that I've never had that experience, nor am I likely to: there was an early version of the cover design for Against Gravity I wasn't entirely sure about, but Tor UK (as H/al Duncan pointed out in his own blog) were incredibly good about allowing me input. Which is pretty remarkable, given that there's no guarantee any particular author is going to have the faintest clue what a good cover design should look like. Put yourself in the shoes of an editor trying to explain to an author why the painting his mate down the pub knocked together isn't necessarily suitable for a print run of fifteen thousand trade paperbacks.

The reason authors get so worked up about this, I think, has to do with a degree of identification between the author and the book they've written: that book isn't just selling the words on the pages, it's selling - in a sense - the author as well. That's you on the shelf: and if somebody's taken your technothriller and wrapped it up in a party dress with a pink ribbon, you're going to feel driven to suggest this is perhaps inappropriate.

The fact that Tor Uk are not only going to accept feedback from one of their authors, but even go so far as to act on that feedback, is a phenomenon perhaps unprecedented in modern publishing: as long as there have been books, there have been writers wailing about their cover design. Book companies do not have a reputation for taking writer's comments concerning cover art on board. The people most authors deal with, after all, are the editorial staff: all the art stuff is in another department, closely tied in with marketing.

I got thinking about all this when I was at a writer's circle meeting last Tuesday. Jim Steel came along as he occasionally does, and showed me a copy of the most recent Locus magazine: naturally I flicked through to the 'British Books Received' pages and, with heavy heart, noted the early 'discarded' version of the cover for Against Gravity up there in black and white at the top of the page.

The reason for this is simple, and in fact makes a fair bit of sense. The opportunities for promoting a book tend to be limited. In some ways, a publisher's job is not so much to sell a book to the public as it is to sell it to the booksellers. The presence of some form of cover art is frequently an important part of this, so Tor simply used what it had to hand. Which is why there are, at least for the moment, two versions of the cover art for Against Gravity floating around: the one that got chucked (as seen in Starburst and Locus), and the one that's actually going to be on the book (to your left, top of the page).

In this light, I've been aware of certain related conversations in the online sf world, in particular an online discussion and essay by Ted Chiang, concerning the US cover design for his collection of short stories. He hated it so much he paid an artist three grand to come up with a brand new design, which his publishers rejected: he considered giving it away to people who'd already bought the book to put around it, which his publishers hated even more.

I tripped across a new cover design for a book by Lucius Shephard called The Golden, which it was clear from the context of an online conversation Mr Shephard wasn't happy about. Personally, I wasn't so hot on it either: but I own an earlier hardback cover of The Golden from about ten years ago, and I'm not sure that isn't worse.

The thing is, if you're just someone browsing through the bookshelves of a shop looking for something to read, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was perhaps all a bit of a storm in a teacup. It's only a cover, you might say. And, that's true. But on this side of the fence, it feels different: it's like someone's paid you a sum of money to publish your book, but in return you need to attend every subsequent sf convention and business meeting dressed like a mutant duck. In other words, people feel silly at the least, badly misrepresented at the worst. They want their work - and writing a book is a lot of work - to have dignity. Nothing wrong with that.

The worst possible outcome is when a book isn't so much given dodgy cover art as mis-marketed. The other day, someone was having a clear-out of books and I subsequently received a copy of Dreamwatcher, by Theodore Roszak. Now, Roszak isn't exactly a house-hold name, but he's known in certain circles for his non-fiction writing. However, I've only read one book of his, a work of fiction, called Flicker, which easily makes it into my top hundred books of all time (the convoluted route by which I became aware of this novel is an entire blog entry in itself, one I intend to write up sometime quite soon). It's a complex detective story concerning the hunt for an elusive movie maker embarked upon by a young film critic, and even these few words don't even begin to do justice to this remarkable book.

The copy of Dreamwatcher I received I haven't yet read, but it's unlikely I would ever have picked it up from any bookshelf if I wasn't already aware of the name: the art - the copy dates, probably, from the mid-eighties at the latest, mid-Seventies at the earliest - is of the type I'd expect to find wrapped around some hacked-out sub-Stephen King gorefest by a writer of considerably less talent than I know Mr Roszak to have. Now - I haven't actually read the book yet, and for all I know it deserves exactly the cover it got. But, you know something tells me otherwise.

Reasons for not blogging: writing four (four!) book outlines and subsequent sample chapters simultaneously. In no particular order: A Hundred Houses, A Gift From the Angels (formerly Leviathan's Fall, formerly Touched by an Angel), Snowflake (working title only: previously Slow Burn), and Wonderland (formerly but also still possibly Things Unseen).

Phew.

Other reasons for not blogging: a request from Cheryl Morgan to Glasgow writers to put together a few words about the city, for the benefit of visitors coming to the Worldcon in August. It made sense to put my stuff up here as well (since I'd been thinking,really, of doing something like this anyway as the Worldcon approached). So:


A MOTORWAY RUNS THROUGH IT
The Barras
Found at the east end of the city centre, just off the High Street, which in previous centuries stood near the city centre (since moved about a mile west). It’s worth making the distinction between ‘The Barrowlands’ and ‘The Barras’ as the former is the venue for the majority of visiting rock and pop acts in Glasgow, and the latter is the weekend market that takes place around it.
At the Barras, it’s possible to pick up anything from fresh fruit and veg to an unholy quantity of tat as well as genuine rarities: within a few blocks you can find TV’s, used clothes, broken cassette recorders, bootleg software, music and DVD’s, smuggled tobacco, furniture, antiques, rare vinyl, posters, more bootlegs, cameras, Betamax video players, carpets, eight track stereos, dodgy paintings of Elvis, and local bands filming cheap videos with their mates from the Art School in order to look more ‘street’.
To get a flavour of the Barras, think: what your weekend shopping might be like if the Cold War had gone nuclear sometime in the mid-Eighties.
Across the road from the Barrowlands music venue, can be found the famous/notorious ‘Saracen’s Head’ drinking establishment, originally built to cater for the executioners who used to ply their trade nearby (the ‘Necropolis’ graveyard being conveniently located just up the road). Visiting the ‘Head is not necessarily recommended to visitors from the States, despite it having supposedly cleaned up its act in recent years (unless you really want to risk re-enacting the ‘mugging a tourist’ scene from Trainspotting).
On a similar note, the Barrowlands music venue is also notorious as being the 1960’s stalking ground of Scotland’s most infamous serial killer, Bible John.
It’s also worth noting the nearby Paddy’s Market: in some ways, Paddy’s represents the true nature of the Barras, which – like Paddy’s – started out primarily as a gathering point not only for local farmers but also rag-and-bone men who would bring other people’s detritus to market on barrows.
To get a flavour of Paddy’s, think: your weekend shopping after a nuclear exchange, but followed by irreversible nuclear winter.
Open: weekends, from about 9 to 4. Getting there: train from station opposite SECC, to Argyle St. station, then ten minute walk or two minutes by taxi. Also plenty of buses.

(Some) Rock pubs
Some of Glasgow’s bars have become quite famous due to their associations with the drinking and social habits of various bands who’ve come to prominence in recent years (Franz Ferdinand, etc). Prominent amongst these is King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, (Oasis were ‘discovered’ here, playing to an audience of barely a dozen, by a less than sober Alan McGee). For up-and-coming bands, it’s the first stop on arrival in the city: it’s split into two halves, the bar area on the ground floor, with the rowdy noise-making taking place upstairs.
A few blocks away on Sauchiehall Street is Nice n’ Sleazy, which caters mostly to old punks and students from the nearby Glasgow School of Art. Features faux-retro décor and paintings of slightly sinister-looking green-skinned women in turbans, courtesy of local artist Ronnie Heeps. Expect to find indie bands gathered in alcoves, discussing how to break it big.
King Tut’s: 272a St. Vincent Street www.kingtuts.co.uk
Nice n’ Sleazy: 421 Sauchiehall Street
Ronnie Heeps: www.painfulcreatures.com/collheeps.html

Bars also worth mentioning:
For those seeking a quiet drink and maybe a meal, The Goat is worth considering: a short (fifteen minute) walk from the front entrance of the SECC, The Goat also features free WIFI if you decide to bring your laptop with you (they also have a computer you can use if you don’t). A mixture of old ‘found’ furniture and the stylishly modern but comfortable.
The Goat, 1287 Argyle Street, www.thegoat.co.uk

If you’re looking for something approximating a genuine, old-fashioned ‘Scottish’ bar, this place is worth a shot: very much a ‘dog sleeping in the corner, couple of people playing traditional music on fiddles’ kind of place, it’s hardly lacking in atmosphere. Also situated conveniently very close to the SECC. Be warned: as pubs go, it’s very small – I’ve been in bathrooms that were bigger.
Ben Nevis, 1147 Argyle Street

The West End:
Like many cities, Glasgow has its own ‘bohemian quarter’, or - more accurately - student district, centred around the axis of Great Western Road and Byres Road in the West End.
Your best route through this area is to come up the orange tunnel next to the entrance to the SECC, keep walking up Minerva Street (car dealership on your left), then turn left onto St. Vincent Crescent, turn right at Cecil Street, which leads directly onto Argyle Street.
(Alternatively, catch the train into Central Station, walk a block to the St. Enoch subway station, and catch a ride to Kelvingrove Subway, which will deposit you directly onto Great Western Road).
This part of Argyle Street – which runs right through the city – has enjoyed a transformation over the past several years as rocketing property prices in the West End have forced both new house owners and students to look increasingly farther afield from Byres Road/Great Western Road for places to live. As a result, some of the trendiest as well as the nicest bars can also be found here, a few minutes walk from the SECC.
Once on Argyle Street, turn to your left and walk for a minute or so until you reach Kelvinhaugh Street, where Stereo can be found, a bar catering primarily to an audience hungry for live indie bands (the aforementioned The Goat, as well as Ben Nevis, are literally seconds away on Argyle Street).
A few blocks further along, Argyle Street merges with Sauchiehall Street to become Dumbarton Road: here you’ll find the Art Galleries, unfortunately still closed for renovation.
Best bet is to keep along Argyle Street to where you’ll see the road split in two with a garage stuck in the middle: go down the right fork and immediately turn the corner – you’ll see the Kelvin Way, a road which cuts straight past the Art Galleries (on your left) and on into the West End, along with Kelvingrove Park (on your right).
At the end of the Kelvin Way you’ll find Gibson Street cutting down to your right: it features the excellent and highly recommended Stravaigin’s bar, as well as a very agreeable coffee house a few doors further down.
Keep going along Kelvin Way and it becomes Bank Street, which is where the West End really begins. Keep going until Great Western Road: if you turn right here, you’re heading into town. Turn left, and you’re heading into the University district.
Turn towards town (to your right), and you’ll find several bars, restaurants and cafes within a block or two (all generally pretty good: The Liquid Ship has a good reputation), along with an Apple Macintosh shop (Scotsys, if you’re in desperate needs of parts or supplies), and further along a bicycle shop (Alpine Bikes, who also rent bikes out: www.alpinebikes.co.uk/ourshops/goe.aspx).
You’ll also find Caledonia Books, a well-known second-hand bookstore (Voltaire and Rousseau is just around the corner in Otago Street).
Walk further up Great Western Road away from town (ie turn to your left), and you’ll find: health food stores, record shops, furniture, and many, many charity shops. A busy, popular area.
Walk several blocks along Great Western Road away from the city centre, and you’ll reach the point where Great Western Road meets Byres Road. Here you’ll find Oran Mor, a church recently converted into an enormous bar with ceiling paintings by local literary light Alisdair Gray: it’s already got an excellent reputation, both as a bar and as a venue for the arts (it puts on plays almost daily). Be warned, however, it’s almost always very, very busy.
In this area, you’ll also find one or two shops catering to the art market, good to know if you’re at all thinking about taking the work of Scottish artists home with you.
The Botanics are across the road, on your left – stop here for a moment or two to enjoy the shade in the giant greenhouses, particularly good if you’re caught in the occasionally chilly Scottish ‘summer’. Otherwise, more of the same down Byres Road: record shops – particularly the dirt-cheap and highly regarded Fopp!, which also sells mucho cheap paperbacks as well as cd’s and dvd’s. Keep going and you’ll also find the Oxfam charity bookshop, also good for a browse.
Walk past the Hillhead subway station and turn immediately into the lane on your left for several excellent bars (including The Scotia, which often has live music of a more traditional variety) and restaurants (The Loft, as well as the very famous but not inexpensive Ubiquitous Chip, almost entirely populated by assistant producers from the BBC and out of work actors), as well as a small cinema. This is as close to the spiritual heart of the West End as you can get. Also here can be found the Mclellan Galleries, a large building filled with many small shops selling everything from locally made jewellery to video games to second hand vinyl.

I was given cause, after reading an online article by Norman Spinrad – as well as a point-by-point rebuttal of much said in Spinrad’s article by Matthew Chaney in his online blog – to think about what it is I’m trying to do when I write sf.

Spinrad, while writing about China Mieville’s ‘Iron Council’, happened to mention the idea that for him, at least, science fiction was largely about writing stories that in some sense were believable, in the sense that they reflected, at least on some level, something that could actually happen.

Now, this is a very particular form of the genre, and one that is deliberately self-limiting. No magic, no woolly pseudo science. It also means, in the strictest sense, no wormholes, a common enough conceit that I use at length in Angel Stations. There’s no evidence that any such thing would be scientifically possible or – depending on which magazines or online articles you read - if not impossible, then probably unachievable. (But maybe…)

A lot of this stick-to-the-known-rules sf (or, more commonly, ‘nuts and bolts’ sf), by limiting itself to the quantifiable limits within which reality appears to function, leads to narratives which are either ‘ideas-driven’ – where the central conceit is as important, or sometimes even more important, than the human characters who are witnesses and participants in the narrative (Dragon’s Egg by Robert Forward) – or are instead an exploration of the social, political and cultural effects of living in an increasingly technologised environment (say, Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge).

On the other hand, it might be argued that to be ‘self-limiting’ in a way that modern fantasy, currently in the midst of a self-driven reinvention, perhaps isn’t, is actually a step backwards: that maybe it’s better to ignore certain rules in favour of a freewheeling narrative freedom perhaps best personified in sf by the new-wave, amongst whose number Spinrad is frequently included.

I find myself stuck in the middle of these opposing arguments, primarily because one of my lasting ambitions has always been not only to write and publish science fiction novels (achieved), but to write books which are, in the sense I think Spinrad means, achievable.

Now, I’m going to have to stop here and make it clear exactly what I mean by ‘achievable’.

In his ‘On Books’ article in Asimov’s, Spinrad suggests that:

‘… while the game of fantasy is to play with the impossible, the game of SF, even post-modern space opera, is to at least pretend the story takes place sometime somewhen within our own universe. Therefore, if literarily successful, it does more to inspire the reader with the subversive notion that what is advocated is possible and thus can aid in calling it into being …

… Deeper even than the scientific method is the conviction that reality has a knowable nature, that all of creation is of a consistent pattern, that it is all interrelated, that what is is real, and what is real is ultimately knowable, and that the supernatural is therefore a contradiction in terms.

This, I am now prepared to contend, is the root metaphysical assumption of all true science fiction. And in literary terms, it means that all true science fiction is centered on the interaction of the external surround–physical, political, cultural, linguistic, anything and everything–with the lives and consciousness of the characters.

If it does this, and there is any speculative element in the externals of the fictional universe at all, it is true science fiction, and if it does not, it is not true science fiction. Period.’

Cheney’s reply, in part, is that

‘…If you think that most of even the famous and inarguably canonical science fiction stories "could in the future or far away or even right now be contiguous with the reality that the reader inhabits", then you are probably deluded and bordering on schizophrenia.’

Which I can’t argue with: but there’s more to the desire to write something which appears ‘achievable’, and it comes down to this:

I know, as do most people, that when they write something, it’s not true. Doesn’t matter if it’s starkly realistic and set in known historical times or takes place on some dragonworld flight of fantasy, it’s not true. Even if it’s the fictionalized account of the life of someone living or recently deceased, it’s still not really true, because the only person who can ever really know what happened or what was said is that person; and even if they write the book themselves, about themselves, it’s not automatically strictly ‘true’, due to the vast subjectivity of memory.

When someone uses a story element which is manifestly not possible within the limits of known science, whether it’s wormholes or magic books, on some level it’s because such elements allow certain fictional situations to come about. It can allow an author to say something (hopefully) which might not easily or as effectively be said otherwise. The wormhole allows the hero to get to some place where something Really Interesting is happening: without the wormhole they’d never get there, and there would be no story.

In Angel Stations, someone eats a ‘book’, or rather, memories chemically encoded in something you swallow. Is this possible? I don’t think it’s particularly likely, but here’s my reasons for using it anyway: 1 – how memories actually work, along with vast swathes of the wet grey stuff between our ears, isn’t known, so it’s a free field. 2 – I liked the surreal image of someone ‘eating a book’ and seeing through someone else’s eyes and ears, not unlike (but also very different from) picking up a paper book and reading it. 3 – it allowed me to explore the psyche of one character in particular, in a way that felt more interesting and dramatic than simply describing her internal conflicts. You get to see her, seeing herself, through someone else’s eyes.

Now I find myself in a situation where I’m working on a particular book outline, and wondering if I can indeed create something that adheres to the known physical qualities of the universe as we understand it - while at the same time, thinking up relevant plot elements that don’t adhere strictly to The Rules: and trying to make up my mind which way I really want to go.
The fiction I favoured the most as a kid was the relatively hard stuff (as well as, yes, Dick and Bester and Ellison and Moorcock and Ballard, and all the new wavers and experimentalists). Sometimes the quality of the prose got sacrificed along the way, but I often found something alluring about fiction which stuck with The Rules. I find myself still wanting to do the same thing.

The story I’m currently thinking of developing a full outline for is set on another planet: we know there are other planets. The characters get there with some form of achievable space travel, moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light, but never surpassing it. They would get there by reasonably predictable means (I might allow fusion technology, which is still strictly speculative at the moment). There would be life on the planet: but beyond the nuts and bolts, the story would be about human nature, and why people are the way they are, and why history will continue to repeat itself.

Then I thought: wouldn’t it be really cool if … and suddenly I saw a plot device that would make the story work in a way that involved, unfortunately, something which according to the world as it is understood in our post-Enlightenment era of science, to be utterly impossible pseudo-magical flummery.

Bummer.

A plot device which would nonetheless create (I hoped) a narrative tension that might not otherwise exist. But the story wouldn’t be ‘possible’ in the way I might otherwise have intended . It would be manifestly more untrue than the story I’d originally been considering. It would become a work of science fantasy, rather than science fiction.

The thing is, until a book is actually written, ideas are very fluid things. Storylines, characters and ideas come and go at a whim. The story as I currently imagine it might be very different from the story as a finished manuscript. As it currently exists in my head, it’s been transformed in a way that might be better for the story, but less good for my ‘pure and untarnished work of hard science fiction’ idea.

So why the obsession with The Rules? It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I never got on too well with fantasy. I’ve never read a fat fantasy trilogy. Dragons, lost magical rings, they all bore the hell out of me. Plus, the whole notion of a ‘magical universe’ always appeared to me – but most particularly, during my formative years – to be an approach that allowed the possibility of absolutely anything to happen; that all the author needed to do to fix a particular dilemma or scene was to wave a metaphorical wand in the form of some fictional spell and, bang, the story moved on.

And besides, I was always a technologist at heart – what the hell did I want to read about some freaking magical kingdom for? That seemed to me a desire for some unbelievable pre-technological utopia I wanted no part of. I tried reading Lord of the Rings and gave up after five pages. I watched the movies for the hell of it, but still kept wondering: so where the hell is this place?
But the line isn’t firm: Lucius Shepard gets to walk around inside my head any time he feels like it. So does Holdstock’s Mythago Wood (although I contend it’s a work of science fantasy, not fantasy per se). Some stuff engages me, a lot doesn’t.

But then again, it's worth remembering that what’s really important is the way the characters in a story interact: more perhaps than the technology or the feasibility or unfeasibility of various plot devices, what matters to the reader is how realistically the fictional people they’re reading about react to a given situation, or interact with each other. Richard Morgan’s Market Forces posits a near-future which is extravagantly unlikely, as Cheney points out in an earlier Mumpsimus entry. We are never going to see, as he says, a world where a combination of Mad Max and The Contender is a daily part of life. But the important thing about Market Forces is that it has ‘something to say’ about the feral, primitive nature of modern capitalism, its strict rules of winners and losers, massive profits and unacceptable losses. In that light, a book like Market Forces makes sense, and suspension of disbelief (for this reader, anyway) becomes achievable.

So I got to thinking about this particular book idea I mentioned above. So maybe I allow a plot device to be used, which would make The Rules warp to breaking point. It still may allow me – if I decide to take that marginally more fantastical than strictly scientifically rational route – to make the point I want to make. Perhaps I’m worrying too much, and all that really matters is telling the story in the way it demands to be told. But I know for all that, I’ll keep worrying about Those Rules.

I saw the proof bound copy of Al's book Vellum on Saturday night, and very nice it is too. The thing is huge - about eight hundred pages, and it got me thinking again that it would be a nice idea to get a group photo of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writer's Circle (hereafter referred to as GSFWC) when the Glasgow Worldcon comes up in August, given that the event coincides, not entirely accidentally, with several publication dates.

First up is my old flatmate Michael Cobley (and one-time GSFWC'er, now living abroad), whose book Shadowmasque is out in June. Then my second book Against Gravity is out in mid-July, a month before the Con. Al's book Vellum is out in August, just in time for the Con. Miller Lau isn't a GSFWC'er, but she is another Scottish writer, and she's got a book coming out also from Tor UK round about the same time. And on top of that, Phil Raines - another GSFWC'er - has a story in Datlow's Year's best Fantasy and Horror. Plus, there'll be another anthology coming out in time for the Con, sort of Shipbuilding 2, and sort of er, not, called Nova Scotia.

What's interesting about this sequence of launch dates is the contrast with the last Glasgow Worldcon in 1995, when the presence of local authors working within the roughly sketched territory of what we call sf was far more limited: in that respect, it wasn't really a very Scottish Con, with the notable exception of Iain Banks. I think Ken McLeod was around at the time, but I don't think he'd yet achieved the degree of success he has now.

So what I'm saying is, this looks like it's going to be a very Scottish con, given the number of authors either born in or now living here. There's also Richard Morgan of course, and Charlie Stross over in Edinburgh. There are others, but my mind's gone a bit blank, so apologies if I've missed you out. This is hugely different from the '95 experience.

(slight update - a Google search reveals Miller Lau is now publishing under her real name, Deborah J. Miller, and the book is called Swarmthief's Dance, out in September. Which probably explains why I couldn't find anything new by her on a quick browse through Amazon ...)

Excuse me while I momentarily slip into huckster mode, but I hadn't realised the UK website Play.com also sold books. This is significant, because they have free postage. So, er, you can get Angel Stations for a sum total of £8.49 (link). It's still a quid cheaper over on Amazon, but only if you spend at least £19.

... by the way, I am not the author of the book listed under 'other books by...'!