Just a heads-up I'm going to be radically revising the website sometime soon. I'll be switching over to a service called carrd.co. Carrd doesn't host blogs, so I'll be maintaining the blog here on blogger.com for a while yet and linking back to it from the new site: but I'll change the template to something much more simple and, hopefully, somewhat more friendly to modern PCs, tablets and phones.
I've been using a very heavily modified Blogger template for the better part of fifteen years, mainly because it's free, and partly because the paid alternatives are frankly a bit expensive and/or complicated. But it's looking ooooold.
The new site is primarily static - if you're still coming here, you know I don't update as often as I used to bar the occasional newsletter. And again, if you want to keep up to date with me without having to come here I recommend you either sign up to the regular monthly newsletter (and get a free book) or join my Patreon for as little as a pound or the equivalent thereof per month, which gives you access to more than 140 posts that include short stories, unpublished exerpts from novels, serialised chunks of novels and previews of pretty much everything I'm working on far in advance of when anyone else gets to see it.
Another reason to sign up to the newsletter: it'll have exclusive news about a forthcoming book. The next newsletter, early next month, will have the blurb for my next book Echogenesis, with the art to follow later.
I'll have a link back here on the new website, so people new to me can still come here and check it out. But when I change over fully, "garygibson.net" will redirect to the new site, not here.
The new site is still a work in progress but close, I think, to completion. If you want to see it before I unleash it on the world, you can see it at its current pre-launch web address of garygibson.carrd.co.
The only glitch I've seen so far is that icons and buttons tend to show up as blank white spaces on phones and tablets. I've been in touch with the company about that.
5/22/2021
Total website revamp coming soon
5/05/2021
Freebie and a sale
Should you be interested, my prequel to Devil's Road, 'Our Lady of Holy Death', is now also available free on Amazon and on other digital stores as well as through my mailing list.
Our Lady of Holy DeathAnd Doomsday Game, the sequel to Extinction Game and Survival Game, is on sale for the first and possibly only time, and only for another few days: https://getbook.at/DGame.
4/21/2021
Story sale, mailing list, and Zardoz
I haven't been keeping up with posting my newsletters to the blog, but I'll try and get back on track with that. But expect at least a month's delay before you get news from me unless I have a new book coming out.
And a reminder: if you want to hear from me regularly, sign up to my mailing list because blogs are dead and mailing lists are the new thing. You get a free novelette currently not available anywhere else (it's not even been submitted to any markets and was in fact created especially for my mailing list), and I write about writing progress, upcoming projects, books I've read and other news.
The number of subscribers, I'm glad to say, has been climbing steadily, and it's the only guaranteed way to find out what I've been up to and what I've been working on. A new newsletter comes from me at the start of each month, and you can unsubscribe as easily as you can subscribe.
Here's a quick summary of the main points from my most recent newsletter:
PODCAST
I was recently interviewed by Gareth Jelley for his science-fiction interview podcast series, INTERMULTIVERSAL. There are a lot more interviews with other authors, so definitely check it out.
SCREENWRITING
A few weeks back I wrote a ten-minute screenplay for a short film and submitted it to a script competition - what most screenwriters do, apparently, to get their stuff noticed.
Last year I wrote a feature-length script, mainly to see if I could do it, based on an old and unused novel outline. I think it came out reasonably well.
Here's the logline for the feature-length script - Hollywood-ese for a one-sentence summary: A detective investigates a series of grisly cannibalistic murders that threaten to reveal the existence of a secret society of people able to absorb the memories of the recently dead by eating their flesh.
Since major publishers don't seem to be fighting their way to my door, cheque-book in hand, I might as well explore other means of telling stories for money.
STORY SALE
I sold a short story to PS Publishing's new UK science fiction magazine project, Parsec, edited by Ian Whates.
FUTURE RELEASES
It's looking likely I'll have a new book out sometime later this year, but a release date is far from certain. More news on that as it comes. It'll be the first time since 2016 that I'll have published a full-length novel that isn't a sequel to something else. More details as they come.
THE MITRE PUB AND INTERZONE
Paul Brazier, who was involved in Interzone's earliest days, has released a short e-book detailing the early meetings of the magazine's editorial staff back in the eighties when they used to meet in a Brighton bar called The Mitre.
Given how big a role Interzone played in my development as a writer, I couldn't help but buy it, even if it's just the collated minutes of different meet-ups. Back then, I'd have loved to be present at some of those pub meetings.
WRITING PROGRESS
The sequel to Ghost Frequencies, Phantom Circuits, is past the 30,000-word mark and still steaming ahead – it's certainly going to be a longer book than the first one.
I still have to go back and write the second draft of another short novel I wrote earlier this year, The Moon Man.
Once this latest first draft is out of the way I'll be moving on to a first draft of what I'm hoping will be an epic story of outer solar system exploration, The Medusa Net.
ZARDOZ
I maintain, and will continue to maintain, that John Boorman's 1970s film ZARDOZ is one of the greatest science fiction films of all time, whether or not it happens to feature Sean Connery wearing a handlebar moustache, kinky leather boots, leather underwear and, at times, a wedding dress. THESE ARE NOT TRUE MEASUREMENTS OF ITS GREATNESS.
Anyhow, I came across this fascinating little piece on Youtube about the making of the film and it's pretty interesting. Check it out.
BOOK REVIEWS
JOHN DIES AT THE END, THIS BOOK IS FULL OF SPIDERS and WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST READ by David Wong.
I've been trying to think of how on Earth to describe these books and the best I can come up with is that they read like a Bill and Ted film as scripted by HP Lovecraft. Or possibly, The Colour out of Space as directed by Kevin Smith.
Two small town idiots make use of an otherworldly drug they call "soy sauce" that allows them to see beyond the veil of normal reality into a realm of uncanny horror and monstrous intrusions into our universe. But, it must be emphasised, with an inordinate number of dick jokes included.
Personally, I found these books an absolute blast. If the idea of cosmic horror filled with dick jokes doesn't do it for you, you're probably doomed anyway.
ALL SYSTEMS RED by Martha Wells.
One of the few times I find myself agreeing with the hype: I'm not even sure how many Murderbot novellas and novels there are now, but if they're half as good as this one I'll almost certainly be buying them.
THE SCIENCE OF INTERSTELLAR by Kip Thorne.
When it comes to non-fiction books about extreme physics, I'm a sucker for punishment. A great deal of this of course went sailing straight over my head, but that doesn't make it any the less fascinating.
In fact, it's extraordinary just how much truly hard science underpins Christopher Nolan's epic science-fiction film, enough so that I really need to give it a re-watch.
Apart from the very deep physics-oriented considerations that went into the film, there's also a good amount of detail here regarding the production and the development of the script along with Kip Thorne negotiating his way through Hollywood as he tries to raise interest in making a science-fiction film like no other.
2/07/2021
Stardust Cowboys, Moon Men and a sale on Devil's Road
Something like seventy short stories and novellas also made the long list, and that will be whittled down to a shortlist of about five for the final award. So while it's quite unlikely either will get that far, it's always nice to get the nod.
Ghost Frequencies, meanwhile, had an equally unexpected but equally nice review over at SF Crowsnest:
"Gibson's writing is flawless, the story is paced so well that one doesn't notice it at all. Equal parts hard science, ghost and detective story, the mixing of genres is handled exceptionally well."
SALE ON DEVIL'S ROAD
The ebook of Devil's Road is on sale at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com from February 2nd to February 9th. So if you're new to my stuff, or you aren't but hadn't yet decided whether to go for this one because it's different from a lot of my previous work, for the next couple of days you can get it for just £1/$1.
The sale will only last a couple of days, so you'd better be quick. And if you're an audiobook fan, Devil's Road has an audiobook available on Audible ( US link / UK link) which you can get at a reduced price if you buy the Kindle edition.
MOON MAN
The first draft of Moon Man is now up to about 40,000 words and progressing reasonably nicely. As I mentioned before (I think) it's about a Scottish immigrant hunting an otherworldly creature across 1860s California.
And because I haven't really put much of my own cultural background into my writing up until now, I've decided to write it partly in Scots.
This requires a really fine balance between authenticity of language and not making it too difficult for the non-Scottish reader to understand. I workshopped it with my writer's group here in Taipei, the majority of whom are American, and it's fair to say one or two of them were a little baffled by the language. But then again American readers represent at best perhaps 10 to 20% of my readership, so I'm not overly worried.
Working on Moon Man has led me to do a little research into the background of the Scots language, which has proved fascinating. Rather than being a dialect of English, or a corrupted form of that language, as some claim, it's an entirely separate but closely related language that in fact predates modern English.
Indeed, prior to the Norman invasion, Scots - or Inglis, as it was then known - was common throughout the British Isles. What most of us now think of English is, in fact, a merging of that language with Norman French.
GEEK STUFF
Or, I Browsed The Internet So You Don't Have To.
First up, Buckaroo Banzai.
One of my enduring memories of the 1987 Worldcon in Brighton was the premiere of a new American film called Buckaroo Banzai In the Fifth Dimension, starring Peter Weller, concerning the adventures of a half-Japanese man who is simultaneously the world's leading brain surgeon, the world's greatest scientist, holder of multiple land speed records and singer and guitarist in the world's most popular band.
What Buckaroo Banzai really is, is Doc Savage adapted for the 1980s and the film, I remember one reviewer commenting with considerable accuracy, leaves you with the feeling of having just watched the latest episode of a long-running series with zero knowledge of prior story developments.
There was meant to be a sequel, referenced heavily in the closing credits, called Buckaroo Banzai Versus the World Crime League, but the movie failed to be enough of a commercial success for that to happen. So consider me flabbergasted when I discovered that the screenwriter has now written that sequel as a novel due to be published later this year .
I, for one, will be buying it. And not just because I really want to know what that watermelon was doing there .
LEGENDARY STARDUST COWBOY
if you're ever stuck for something to talk about during those long zoom meetings with friends, you could always tell them about the Legendary Stardust Cowboy.
I fell down a google hole after discovering NASA once used a song called Paralyzed to wake up astronauts aboard the Skylab in 1973, but got so many complaints that NASA banned the song from their playlist... Making it the only song ever banned in space.
And that tenuous connection is sufficient for me to talk about him here.
How bad or loud could it be for NASA to ban it, you ask? Here he is appearing on the Rowan and Martin Laugh-In in the 60s. You either come away from that thinking it's the greatest of the worst thing you've ever heard.
Personally, I think it's one of the greatest – and apparently David Bowie thought so too. In fact, he not only nicked the 'Stardust' for his own Ziggy Stardust, he later covered one of the Stardust Cowboy's songs on his Heathen album - I Took a Trip on A Gemini Spaceship.
Apparently a documentary about the Legendary Stardust Cowboy is in the works. He's still around, and still playing.
THIS MONTH'S BOOK REVIEWS
I spent January revisiting some old favourites, but as audiobooks this time. Here they are:
HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams
Specifically, the original double album LP recording of Hitchhiker which I originally owned on vinyl in the early 80s and wore out a bunch of record styluses playing it.
There's not much I can say here about it, beyond the fact of it remaining a classic and that I got some funny looks from the Taiwanese when I was walking my dog listening to this and basically laughing my head off from one street to the next.
I'd actually forgotten until this moment that back in Glasgow I have a Zaphod Beeblebear — a teddy bear based on Adams's character Zaphod Beeblebrox . And true to form, it has two heads and three arms and an eyepatch.
Whenever I had visitors back in Glasgow I would be careful to make sure it was out where they could see it. I'd watch people looking at it and see how long it took them to realise what was wrong. The reactions ranged from bemusement to stricken horror. But they never failed to react.
EXPERIMENTAL FILM by Gemma Files
I remember picking this one up as an e-book a few years back pretty much on a whim because it sounded interesting. It turned out to be one of my favourite books I read in 2018.
The story is of a Canadian film critic who discovers a cache of previously unknown films from the early twentieth century made by a woman known for her interest in spiritualism and who had been the sole survivor of a bizarre massacre when she was a young child.
There's something about the combination of cinematic history and horror that really appeals to me, something that was equally done well in Theodore Roszak's Flicker.
The critic starts out trying to uncover more information about a previously unknown chapter in early Canadian film history, thinking there might be a grant in it, before gradually realising she's been drawn into something much darker and much, much older. Terrific stuff.
ANNIHILATION by Jeff Vandermeer
I've known of Vandermeer's work for some years before he broke through to the mainstream with Annihilation, partly because he was an acquaintance of some people in my writers group in Glasgow, partly because I'd run into him at least once at a convention, and partly because he's been a pretty constant online presence for the last couple of decades.
Annihilation was the first book of his that really appealed to me, and again, it's a book that so well-known now that there's not much I can really add about it. Basically, if you like your fiction weird and uncanny — and I certainly do — this is a good example of the form.
A group of investigators are sent into an isolated stretch of coast called Area X which is somehow cut off from the rest of the world, and from which few ever return. The landscape is both familiar and alien, with the protagonist constantly in confused as to whether one prominent feature of the landscape is a tower or a tunnel. The feeling is of a constant derangement of the senses in a manner not dissimilar to another book that explores broadly similar territory, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic.
I'm currently listening to: THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE by Daniel Ellsberg and THIRTEEN STOREYS by Jonathan Sims. I'll be talking about them next time. See you then!
1/08/2021
Moon men, cyberpunk fashion, procedurally-generated horror and favourite books of 2020
The good news, for me at least, is that I finally broke ground on one of those writing projects I talked about last time around. As I said then, I've planned out at least three books in considerable detail, and intend to spend the rest of this year working on them. At the time of writing this, I'm about 18,000 words into a first draft of (provisionally titled) The Moon Man.
I'd intended it to be another novella/short novel, meaning about 40,000 words in length or about the same length as either Ghost Frequencies or Devils Road, but it feels already like it's probably going to be longer than that. Which is fine by me.
WARSUIT REVIEW
Chuck Rothman, writing for Tangent Online, gave me a very nice review for my story Warsuit that recently appeared in Interzone: "The story moves from the usual battles and escapes of military stories and concentrates on the philosophical implications of the situation. Its never dull, though. The battle scenes are mixed with a discussion of the issues involved. Highly recommended." Nice!
COOL STUFF FROM THE INTERNET
I came across this fascinating article by Mark Frauenfelder, on Boing Boing, called "The Quiet Horror of Procedural Generation":
"According to Know Your Meme, The Backrooms originated on 4chan in 2019 when someone posted a photo, taken at an uneasy angle, of a dingy yellow room illuminated by fluorescent lights. There's no furniture or people. The wallpaper, reminiscent of a 1980s hotel conference room, is mismatched. The carpeting has large stains. A divider at the far end hints at an entrance to another, possibly similar room."
This ended up becoming a kind of weird, Ballardian shared universe, with people creating programs to simulate hundreds of millions of square miles of randomly generated empty rooms.
Indeed, Frauenfelder himself notes that this bears more than a passing resemblance to the short story by JG Ballard, "Report on an Unidentified Space Station", which is not only most likely my favourite Ballard short story, it's also quite possibly one of my favourite science fiction stories of all time. You can read it online.
CYBERPUNK AND FASHION
I think I saw this article mentioned on Twitter, possibly by William Gibson himself. One thing about it that immediately grabbed my attention was its reference to a photo illustration from a nineties magazine called Mondo 2000, which you can see if you click through, titled R.U. A Cyberpunk?.
I used to buy Mondo 2000 religiously because, like Omni during its heyday, it seemed to offer a glimpse into the future, even if in retrospect a lot of it was probably nonsense.
Let's pass over the fact that back in those days I had hair pretty much like the model in the photograph, and focus on the fact the article has some fascinating things to say about the relationship between technology and clothing and how we use it to portray the future. It also reminds me of an article I recently read about how cyberpunk fashion appears to be becoming mainstream in China. I don't know what my teenage self when he first read Count Zero in the pages of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in the early to mid-eighties would have made of it all.
YEAR'S BEST
I read — or rather, listened to — about forty books in 2020, a mixture mostly of science fiction, horror and non-fiction. I thought it would be fun to pick out the ones I personally thought were my favourites, in case you're looking for something to read in the grim grey days of the New Year:
Every Anxious Wave (review below)
Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee
The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts
The Gone World by Tom Schweterlitsch
Three Laws Lethal by David Walton
Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant
The Weird and The Eerie by Mark Fisher (special mention).
And if I absolutely, positively had to pick just one overall? The Gone World, by Tom Schweterlitsch.
The 'special mention' of Mark Fisher's book is because I actually read it in 2018, but an audiobook came out early in 2019, and I bought and listened to it immediately. Why? It's a dense if informative book, and almost demands a return to its pages - not to mention it was probably my favourite book of that year.
Runners-up include: Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys, Crooked by Austin Grossman, Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties, and Wanderers by Chuck Wendig.
I've included a complete list of all the books I read in 2020 below.
BOOK REVIEWS
And here's a closer look at what I read in December:
STRANGE ANGEL BY GEORGE PENDLE
This one makes for a pretty remarkable follow-up to Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding, which I talked about in last month's newsletter, not least because it features Parsons and others involved both in rocketry and the occult interacting with the then leading lights of what would later come to be regarded as the Golden Age of science fiction.
For those who don't know, Jack Parsons, the subject of the book, was both a fan of science fiction and also deeply instrumental in the development of rocket science as a distinct field of research in the US in the years leading up to the Second World War, despite considerable opposition and the widely-held belief that rocket travel into space - Parson's ultimate goal - was a physical impossibility.
After proving it was feasible to build a rocket that could reach the stratosphere, he received funding to build larger and better rockets, eventually receiving far greater funds from the US military upon America's entry into the Second World War. In the process he set up the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, choosing to use the word 'jet' because the word 'rocket' still had so many negative connotations.
At the same time, and which makes Parsons' story so intriguing to so many, he developed a deep fascination with the occult that led to his forming a Californian chapter of Aleister Crowley's OTO, or Ordo Templi Orientis. That, in turn, did him little favour so far as his scientific reputation was concerned.
He formed a friendship with a certain L Ron Hubbard, the later founder of Scientology, and that in turn led to him meeting and befriending a number of science fiction luminaries including Robert Heinlein and John W Campbell.
Definitely recommended, especially if you already read the Nevala-Lee. File under: "you wouldn't believe it if it was fiction'.
88 NAMES BY MATT RUFF
Matt Ruff, of course, is the author of the wildly successful Lovecraft Country. 88 Names, by contrast, bears zero resemblance to that other book.
I have a huge amount of respect for Ruff's willingness to buck commercial requirements and write, or so it seems to me, whatever the hell he feels like writing. Most of the time, publishers require their authors — whether they state it openly or not — to write essentially the same book again and again.
And, in fairness to publishers, there are good commercial reasons for this. But if you're a writer, and if like me you get bored writing the same kind of story again and again, you wind up wondering why you don't just get a regular day job instead of just churning out the same old stuff with what feels like diminishing returns.
I can't speak to Ruff's motivations, but in my mind I like to imagine his reasons are similar to mine. Instead of writing Lovecraft Country 2: Zombie MLK, he instead chose to write a Ready Player One-like tale about political intrigue and computer games.
In this case, a Sherpa — here, defined as someone who makes a living guiding rich people through highly complex MMORPG's sometime in the near future — begins to suspect his new, anonymous client might be none other than the leader of North Korea.
And all in all, it's a pretty decent story, but perhaps not quite up to the level of his previous stuff, including but not limited to Lovecraft Country. Which is why it doesn't make the top of my years best list. Still, it's definitely worth checking out.
A DARKLING SEA BY JAMES L. CAMBIAS
This is a straight-up, old-fashioned tale of adventure in the ocean of a Europa-like moon in another solar system. Indeed, it could almost have been written by Niven or Bova back in the seventies. Human researchers are engaged in the study of the intelligent denizens of that ocean, but aren't permitted to interact with them or get very close to them, thanks to the oversight of a third and much more advanced spacefaring species who have their own version of Star Trek's Prime Directive. Naturally, that isn't exactly how things work out, and this novel details the consequences.
This one had been on my radar for a while, and I have to admit I felt a little motivated to finally get around to reading it because I myself had been working on an outline for a novel set in the hypothetical ocean beneath the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. And while it's entertaining enough, it perhaps feels a little too close to its influences, and rather than evoking a sense of wonder it's more likely to invoke a sense of nostalgia.
EVERY ANXIOUS WAVE BY MO DAVIAU
This made my list of favourite books of the year by taking a familiar idea and doing something that felt appealingly fresh. It reads like a more punk Bill and Ted, after the former guitarist in a 90s indie band, now running a bar called The Dictators Club, discovers a wormhole in his bathroom — an experience I'm sure we've all shared at some point in our lives.
Quickly getting a friend and MIT graduate involved, they soon have a brisk trade in sending people nostalgic for their youth back in time to long-past gigs. After accidentally sending a friend back to 980 rather than 1980 by punching in the wrong numbers, the protagonist recruits a physicist who also just happens to share his love for nineties indie rock in order to try and get him back.
On the surface, and described like that, the story sounds so light as to be almost ephemeral, but Davaiu is an exceptionally talented writer, and brings a considerable depth of character development and emotion to her tale. It isn't long before numerous timelines get twisted together like a plate of spaghetti dropped from a very great height, as our hero journeys into the past, future and all points in between.
Thinking about it, what made this book really work for me is that it takes the classic science fiction notion of the competent protagonist and boots it right out of the park in favour of the messy, emotionally complex and frequently illogical reality.
Unfortunately, and I say that with real regret, this appears to be Davaiu's only novel, published about five years ago, although her Amazon page shows that she's had material published in a number of literary and definitely non-genre publications. It just goes to show you it doesn't matter how good a book is, quality doesn't guarantee commercial success. I just hope you like it as much as I did.
BOOKS LISTENED TO IN 2020
Strange Angel by George Pendle
88 Names by Matt Ruff
A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias
Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee
The Origin of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
Wasteland by W. Scott Poole
Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown
Burning Chrome by William Gibson
The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts
The Gone World by Tom Schweterlitsch
Crooked by Austin Grossman
The Fisherman by John Langan
Ghostland by Edward Parnell
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
World War Z by Max Brooks
Chaos: Charles Manson, the CI adn the Secret History of the Sixties
The Crying Machine by Greg Chivers
Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need by Blake Snyder
Wanderers by Chuck Wendig
Three Laws Lethal by David Walton
Obscura by Joe Hart
The Deep by Alma Katsu
The Colony by F.G. Cottam
The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher
Terminus by Peter Clines
Agency by William Gibson
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss
Ayoade on Top by Richard Ayoade
Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright
Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant
The Ministry of Truth by Dorian Lynskey
Danse Macabre by Stephen King
On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming.
12/11/2020
December update, publishing plans, and some book reviews
11/14/2020
November Newsletter
I post my newsletter three times: first to my mailing list, then again to those on the mailing list who didn't open it the first time, then I post it to Facebook and here on my website. This time around I've had to completely rewrite the opening three times because, frankly, the world keeps changing at lightning speed. When I first put this out like, a week ago, there was no sign of an end to the pandemic, Trump still had a chance at winning, and there was no vaccine in sight. So, I make no promises about anything that happens between the time I write this addendum and when you actually read these words. Anyway, moving on...here's my November newsletter...this time with added Tony Ballantyne.
You may have seen in the news that Taiwan, where I've been living for several years now, received some praise due to its handling of the crisis. Where I sit right now I'm only maybe a couple of hundred miles across the Taiwan Strait from where Covid first broke out, yet there hasn't been a single recorded case of infection here for more than two hundred days. What few cases there have been originated with people arriving from abroad and then diagnosed while undergoing mandatory quarantine.
While life here continues largely as normal. I know it doesn't for many of you, and you have my sympathies. The world will be a very different place by the time we emerge from this crisis (written pre-vaccine announcement).
OUT AND ABOUT
So far as life being relatively normal here goes, I recently purchased a second-hand electric bicycle, manufactured by Giant, one of the biggest bicycle manufacturers in the world and a company native to Taiwan. It's a neat little machine, halfway between a scooter and a traditional bicycle, and I got it primarily so I could load my dog Cooper into the front basket and take him to some different places around the city for the sake of variety as much as anything else.
Here you can see Cooper sniffing around under Fuhe Bridge, which connects Taipei to New Taipei City, a few miles from where I live. Past the open space you can see here there's a bunch of kids on rollerblades circling around under the watchful eye of a trainer, and past them is a badminton court. To the right is a long-running flea market, although you can't quite see that either.
And now the weather is cooler here, following a typically ferocious Taiwanese summer, I'm hoping to get out and do a little more regular cycling on my road bike. It's been some time since I tried to conquer any one of the hills and mountains surrounding Taipei, and I'm starting to feel that urge to visit them again. The scenery is frankly spectacular, and I'll try and make a point of taking some pictures and show you in the months coming.
SHORT STORIES
I seem to be writing more short stories these days, mainly because my writing group here have been playing around with flash fiction prompts, and it's led me to realise can generate some half-decent short story ideas on the fly. Right now there's about half a dozen of these bouncing around different magazines in the hopes of finding a home.
And speaking of short stories, it's the return of the author feature! Those of you who were here at the start when I started putting out regular monthly newsletters will recall I ran some features covering new publications by various authors whom I felt might be of interest to you.
This time around it's Tony Ballantyne. Tony had several novels out from Tor UK about the same time I did, and since then he's also had books published by Solaris. Most recently, he's released a collection of short fiction called Midway via Keith Brooke's Infinity Plus imprint, and which got a very good write-up in the Guardian quite recently. Here's a few words from Tony about his book:
TONY BALLANTYNE
Short story collections don't sell. Everyone in publishing will tell you that.
Every writer who has a few short stories under their belt loves the idea of having them collected into a slim volume.
Unfortunately, very few people are interested in reading them.
Best selling authors have the clout to get their anthologies published. You can see them smiling in the publicity photographs, delighted that their precious children are out there in the world. Look closely and you'll see their agent and editor exchanging glances in the background. They're waiting for their charge to get back to the PC so they can start on the next novel. That's where the real money is.
And that's best selling authors. You'd have to be mad to write a short story collection.
I didn't intend to write Midway. I had an idea for a novel set in an old cotton mill near where I live. I was working on the preliminary notes when my father took ill. The next six months, the last months of his life, threw everything into turmoil. The mill stories got caught up in my thoughts at the time and became my way of dealing with the situation. I wrote little else that year, but it didn't matter. Midway was my catharsis. But I finished the book and life moved on.
I wondered at first about seeking publication. The stories were very personal. It was my wife who persuaded me to send them out into the world. As she pointed out, other people had been through the same thing. They might find them helpful.
It turns out she was right. This is the first book I've written that my friends have read. By that, I mean my non-writer friends, my friends who aren't SF or Fantasy fans. The vast majority of the people I know, in other words.
Of course, my friends have bought my books in the past, but that was just out of politeness. They read the first chapter, but it wasn't for them. I don't have a problem with that, we all have different tastes and interests.
But to my surprise, this book connects with many people. No, not to my surprise. My wife said it first, and she was right. This book is for people who've been through the same thing. People who recognise the situations depicted in it.
Someone said to me: this book made me cry. Well, that's why I wrote it, to try and understand those feelings. I think I understand them better now.
So, the book is out, it's published. If it sells a hundred copies I'll be delighted, but it doesn't matter.
Publication wasn't the primary aim of this book.
Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Midway-Tony-Ballantyne-ebook/dp/B08KFGX1RP
BOOK REVIEWS
GHOSTLAND by Edward Parnell
in some ways, this almost feels like a companion piece to Tony's collection of short stories, except rather than being fiction it's a work of creative non-fiction. Edward is a fan of a very particularly British kind of supernatural story, ranging from M R James through to Nigel Kneale and beyond, and uses the book to address those parts of the landscape of Britain that featured heavily in works by those writers and others of their ilk.
Along the way he visits the locations in which a number of famous stories were set and also the locations of a number of the more odd television productions of the 1960s and 1970s such as Robin Redbreast and Penda's Fen, both made for the BBC's at the time highly influential drama production series Play for Today. Parnell uses this as a springboard for writing about his family and the series of overwhelming tragedies visited upon them through those same years. All in all, it's nearly impossible to categorise, but endlessly fascinating if like me you have memories, however distant, of some of the odder corners of British culture and storytelling.
OBSCURA by Joe Hart
A curious one this, and I wasn't sure whether to recommend it. A woman is sent to a remote space station in order to carry out research into a kind of viral Alzheimer's that seems to be affecting the crew and where a paradigm-shattering scientific breakthrough has implications for the future of humanity on Earth.
All in all, it's an enjoyable story, but not one that hangs together quite as well as I had hoped. Nonetheless, it has some moments of bravura tension and some well-placed twists and surprises.
THE TEST by Sylvain Neuvel
A novella this time, and a very British one, centred as it is around the British Citizenship test for immigrants with its peculiar and, frankly, bizarre real-world focus on the most ridiculous minutiae of British history, most of it sufficiently obscure the average "man in the street" in the UK almost certainly couldn't answer a number of those same questions. And yet it's somehow a requirement for people seeking a new life in Britain.
This is set a little way in the future, however, and Things Are Not Quite What They Seem, and events soon take a very dramatic and very unexpected turn. I'd been meaning to check this out for a while, and learning it had been optioned by a major film company gave me the final push to check it out. Recommended.
And that's it for reviews and for this month! Currently, I'm listening to the audiobook of Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown.
10/09/2020
October Newsletter: Interzone and Book Reviews
Continuing on with my experiment in posting a shortened version of my monthly newsletter here, as well as to email subscribers. Keep in mind if you subscribe, you get to download a free prequel novelette to my most recent book, Devil's Road. There's other stuff, as below, that is often exclusive to subscribers.
Are you a fan of audiobooks? I got seriously into them last year after an eye operation meant I couldn't read my Kindle for a couple of weeks. Since then, I've produced a couple of my own based on my short novels Ghost Frequencies and Devils Road, with the first of those being narrated by the actress Seylan Baxter, whom some of you might have seen in a fairly recent episode of Doctor Who and also in the surprise hit horror film Host.
The audiobooks are available on audible.com and on audible.co.uk, but right now I'm giving away copies of Ghost Frequencies to users of the UK site – unfortunately, I've run out of the codes necessary in order to give away copies on audible.com. That's just a function of popularity — audiobooks are a lot bigger in the United States than they are in the United Kingdom, so freebies for audible.com tend to go a lot faster - and the fact that Audible on either side of the Atlantic provide me with only a limited number of such promotional codes.
But I do still have some copies to give away to UK audible subscribers, so if you're interested click on the link below. Be warned: they tend to run out fast.
And if you do like it, I'd be enormously grateful if you left a review, even just a couple of lines.
https://audiobooksunleashed.com/product/ghost-frequencies/
Quick note: I think you have to be a member of audible to take advantage of these, but joining audible doesn't actually cost you anything – not until you want to actually buy something anyway. Or at least, that's what I've been told. If I got that wrong let me know.
WARSUIT IN INTERZONE
Excuse me if I big myself up a bit this month, but I don't publish that much short fiction and I like to trumpet about it when I do.
I mentioned in passing in the previous newsletter that I had a new story, Warsuit, in the current issue of Interzone magazine, which has for a long time been the premier British science fiction magazine. It's where I first found writers like Paul McCauley, Alistair Reynolds, Eric Brown, Liz Williams, Storm Constantine and many many others. Being published in the magazine that published those names and countless others over the last several decades is and will always be a big deal for me.
This makes my third fiction publication in Interzone since 1994. Most of the short fiction I've written has actually been in the last half-decade, with Scienceville appearing in Interzone in 2015 and subsequently recorded for Starship Sofa a year later, and Senseless appearing in Shoreline of Infinity magazine a little more recently. Those stories and others can be found in my collection Scienceville and Other Lost Worlds.
One thing that particularly distinguishes Interzone from other publications apart from the quality of its fiction is its appearance: it's one of the most attractive magazines there is, featuring artists as much as it does writers. I honestly don't think there's been a magazine focused around science fiction that's looked this good since the days of Omni. Take a look at the attached pictures of my contributor's copy that arrived here in Taiwan: 
And the Internet being what it is, there are already a couple of reviews of Warsuit out there. Here's a snippet from a review on sfrevu.com: "Story had a lot of heart. Well done."
And a very nice Goodreads review from user Jeppe Larsen:
"“Warsuit” by Gary Gibson takes place in an otherwise unexplained war zone, following a scavenger hunter who finds a broken mechsuit robot that he hopes can bring him enough money to get off the planet. However, the robot, or Golem as it is called in the story, is still alive with the mind of its now-dead operator. Even though they are hostile to each other at first they conclude they need to work together to survive and as the story moves forward we learn more about these two people and some interesting developments and explanations about the war situation is nicely revealed. Also really well written."
REVIEWS
Here's a quick rundown of some of the books I've read recently which I think you might like:
WORLD WAR Z by Max Brooks
I first read this as an e-book more than ten years ago, and before I bought my first Kindle – at the time, I had a Sony Reader, having become obsessed with the idea of E-ink devices ever since I read about an early Sony prototype in some probably long-gone technology magazine of the early 2000s or possibly even the late 90s.
I'm not precisely an aficionado of zombie fiction, but as you've surely guessed if you've been following along with his newsletters I do have a soft spot for the intersection between horror and science fiction, but WWZ is actually much more than that.
It's loosely modelled after a real-life book by the author Studs Terkel who, in the wake of World War II, travelled around the world interviewing different people about their experiences of the war. The author Max Brooks (son of Mel Brooks) takes the same structure for the story of the journalist travelling around interviewing people about their experiences during a zombie apocalypse which is now largely under control.
What you get then is a collection of short pieces written from different points of view from all around the world of people surviving a science fictional conflict whether it's from the perspective of Japanese nerds trapped in their apartment buildings or astronauts watching it all from the ISS. The effect is remarkable, lending the book as a whole a powerful sense of vérité that lies at the heart of its subsequent success. If all you've seen is the quite terrible movie starring Brad Pitt, trust me when I say the book cannot be judged on that basis.
MEXICAN GOTHIC by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Ostensibly a horror novel set in Mexico in the 1950s, but one which proved to have a surprisingly erudite science-fictional underpinning. I've seen the author's Silvia Moreno-Garcia's name about for a while – she's produced stories about settlers on Mars, a vampire novel set in Mexico City (Certain Dark Things) and I think also a couple of crime novels, but it's with Mexican Gothic that she's seen sudden and huge success with the book hitting the bestseller lists in recent weeks.
The story is about a young woman sent by her father to find out the fate of another member of the family recently married off to a wealthy young man who lives in a remote part of Mexico, in a huge and rambling house known as High Place built by the owners of a nearby silver mine. Of course, it soon turns out that something is terribly wrong, starting with the letter written by the young wife telling of voices coming out of the walls.
On the surface, it appears in every way to be a full-on Gothic horror novel, but it isn't long before Moreno-Garcia reveals her fundamentally science-fiction roots in the rationale for everything that's happening – and does a fantastic job of it.
THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH by Dorian Lynksey
A non-fiction work. Essentially a biography of a novel, in this case, 1984. It's an attempt to assess both the influences and the cultural impact of Orwell's final work of fiction.
The first third covers many of the utopian and dystopian novels written prior to 1984, including works written by Hg Wells (The Sleeper Wakes), Yevgeni Zamyatin (We) and many others. The middle third covers much of Orwell's life, including the influence of his participation in the Spanish civil war and his time working for the BBC propaganda department during the Second World War up until the time of his death in early 1949 and immediately following the first publication of the book with which his name would forever be associated.
After that, the book is primarily concerned with the impact on the book and its interpretation – and misinterpretation – in the following decades by creators, thinkers, artists and writers all across the political spectrum, as well as an analysis of the different adaptations both of 1984 and of works that either borrowed or outright stole from it. It's a remarkably erudite piece of work, and unfailingly well-researched. If you've read 1984 more than a couple of times, you probably need to read this.
9/03/2020
Newsletter: story in Interzone, and a couple of books on sale
4/13/2020
Newsletter
This decision comes after a lot of thought, but at the very least it's going to function mostly as a replacement for the blog. I don't blog much on my website these days (although I continue to post very frequently on my Patreon, including all kinds of stuff I'm working on being made available to subscribers), so the newsletter will for most people be the main way to catch up on what I'm up to, what I'm working on, and what I'm reading. Plus the usual stuff/ranting/etc and maybe the odd interview of other writers as well.
I started the first monthly newsletter at the beginning of April and the response was pretty positive. Next one should be out at the beginning of May. Remember also that if you sign up to my mailing list, you get a freebie prequel to Devil's Road, Our Lady of Holy Death, which isn't available anywhere else.
4/06/2020
Newcon Press virtual book launch
3/02/2020
Devil's Road is out! Plus sales and freebies
Ebook & Audio: Kindle | Audible US | Audible UK | Audible Germany | Audible France
Limited-Edition Signed Hardback (ISBN 978-1-912950-47-8): Newcon Press
Paperback (ISBN 978-9574364602): Amazon UK | Amazon US | Waterstones | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Abebooks and others
1. Doomsday Game is on sale for £1.99/$2.99 on Amazon;
2. Scienceville & Other Lost Worlds is also on sale on Amazon for 99p/99c;
3. The lead story from that collection is free for the next week;
4. For a limited time, mailing list subscribers will be able to download a free audiobook of Ghost Frequencies, my 2018 novella published by Newcon Press and available on Audible. Note that there's a limited number of copies available, so it's very much first come, first served. A newsletter will be going out in a few hours to subscribers with a download link.
5. I've written a prequel story for Devil's Road, Our Lady of Holy Death, which is also free to mailing list subscribers. Again, a link is on its way with the same newsletter.
If you're not a subscriber and you want that story and/or that audiobook, now's the time to join. It doesn't cost you anything, and I only send out emails a couple of times a year.
Note: I use a service called Bookfunnel to host Our Lady of Holy Death so you don't have to dick around with downloading and then uploading a file. Once you've signed up and you click on the link, Bookfunnel will download the story directly to your phone, tablet, computer, Kindle, Nook or whatever you use. It's the same with Ghost Frequencies: there's very little faffing around.
I should also probably remind you that I have a Patreon where I post much more frequently than I do here, and where I mostly talk about book promotion and about writing, as well as posting up early drafts of new books and stories. I also talk about stories I'm either working on or that are planned for the near future.
And that's it! Devil's Road was enormous fun to write, and I hope you have as much fun reading it.