Science Fiction in the local countryside!

Hawkesbury Upton Literary Festival (HULF) was held in St Mary’s church at Hawkesbury Upton yesterday. Hawkesbury Upton is a village not far from here hidden in the rolling hills with quintessential country lanes and obligatory pot holes. One surprise was that the church is the burial place of one of our British Prime Ministers. About seventy people were there from all flightpaths of the universe.

The theme was the ‘Sense of Place’, when we were taken from ancient history, through modern history and modern times, on into the future. Naturally, my main interest was in the future aspects. Stephen Oram gave a very interesting talk about how place can shape the future we live in. Of course he mentioned that anthology (All Tomorrow’s Futures: Fictions That Disrupt) along the way. What I found particularly interesting is the fact that he is actively helping researchers investigate science issues by getting science fiction writers to interact with scientists – the writers add to the debate of the issues that ought to be covered when investigating various topics. I expect some interesting results to come out of his current ones in due course.

Another Bristol-based science fiction author, Tim Kindberg, who wrote the science fiction horror, Vampires of Avonmouth was also mentioned. Both from the point of view how place was important to his novel and the fact he contributed to that anthology mentioned above.

Mark Rutherford entertained us with a lovely science fiction story that had the audience absolutely enthralled. He calls himself a performance writer, which means he writes stories to deliver in performance on stage.

So far, so normal and what can be expected from such literary festival. The strange event (well, you don’t expect me to go anywhere new without something out of the ordinary happening do you?) happened at lunch time. I’d arranged to let them provide me with lunch (as I was too lazy to faff about getting it ready in advance) and ended up sitting opposite another science fiction writer. He has a self-published series of novels for the younger readers. He told me a lovely story how he had found a young artist to illustrate his book cover. She then went on to use that cover as part of her portfolio and is now studying at Plymouth University as a consequence.

This all goes to show that there is a very much a hidden interest in science fiction even in the oddest of corners in this country.

It is even more interesting that the science fiction writers I met do not follow the accepted themes that you can buy in the book stores and the like. It is as if there is an immense underground of science fiction talent bubbling and seething away waiting to burst onto the universe’s stage.

Beyond Writing a Science Fiction Novel…

Some nice things can happen when you’ve got a contact with a publisher to have your cherished novel published for the multiverse to enjoy. As you already know, my second novel, A Truth Beyond Full, is under contract to be published by Elsewhen Press. It’s likely to be out later this year in the autumn.

When I first received the contract to be signed, there was to me this strange clause about Elsewhen wishing to promote the sale of ancillary rights to my novel – audio, braille, film, TV serialisation etc. My reaction? Given the experience of so many authors I know, I went ‘yeah, right, in a month of Sundays’. It is one of those clauses I never expected to be invoked, but it would not do me any harm. So I signed the contract.

Roll on a few months… Elsewhen Press had an exciting announcement. They had signed a retainer contract with a company called Pendragon Works. They will examine the list of books Elsewhen Press have or are publishing with a view to seeing what their potential is for selling film or TV series rights. Once they choose a novel that is likely to sell, Pendragon Works will pull together a pack to send round the film and TV companies.

Roll on to last night…. Elsewhen Press kindly set up a zoom meeting with Troy and Omar at Pendragon Works so they could help us understand what they are trying to do. Of course I did my ‘sit in the corner and observe and listen closely’ act.

Some interesting snippets came out of the comments…. like doing a film of a horror novel is more likely than doing one for the other speculative genres because the designing and building the sets is likely to be much cheaper. … Getting a novel into film or TV series sounds very much like a buyers’ market to me in that it’s good to have an intro pack ready in case your type of novel is asked for. … Have an elevator pitch or log line to hand about your novel, just in case you find yourself being unexpectedly asked for it. There was more, much more, but all a good introduction.

One thing I found heartening from the zoom meeting was Pendragon Works saying that they were impressed by the standard and variety of novels Elsewhen Press had on offer. It makes me feel very privileged to have had a novel accepted by them.

As to whether they’ll take A Truth Beyond Full on to promote to the film industry? Let’s just say from what Pendragon Works said, the odds are currently very much against it given its contents. All I’m going to say about that is what is already on the Elsewhen Press’s website:

A Truth Beyond Full is set in a mining colony on Miranda, one of the moons of Uranus. It will be published by Elsewhen Press in 2024.

Science Fiction Review Crash

It’s always sad when a science fiction anthology has a real downer of a review as one of its first reviews on a website like Amazon. It happened to Space Force: Building the Legacy published in May 2020. It upset the editors and publishers no end because the said review complained that anthology didn’t do things the reviewer expected of it – it did what it said it would do in the published blurb. Had it not been for that single devastating early review, I’m sure there would have been a follow-on anthology published by now. And the world is poorer for the lack of such anthology. Basically one person’s incompetence (it’s the kindest explanation I can give) choked off would could have been an interesting series of anthologies before there was even a call out for stories for the second one.

There is nothing to stop this from happening again, and it is still happening today. Yes, I do novel reviews, but I make it clear where personal preferences have led to me disliking the book – something along the lines of I hate X, which a substantial part of said novel is about, so anyone hating X would have a similar reaction to me type of thing. People can understand that and accept it’s a reasonable point of view to take.

I’m not sure what the answer to this issue is, but one way to mitigate the impact of such a bad review is perhaps to delay publishing reviews until a total of five have been written. That way a bad one will be alleviated to some extent by the others.In fact waiting until five reviews are completed before publishing them would give a more balanced overview of the book. It’s like getting better decisions in general by using a committee rather than relying on one dictator of a person.

I’ve now made my panel preferences for WorldCon at Glasgow. Interestingly my first reaction on reading through the proposed panels was they include a lot of nostalgia for things past. There is no issue with reviewing past science fiction and the history of stuff that helped historic and current science fiction. Lessons can be learnt from that or be a good introduction into that particular area of science fiction. What got me, as it did at EasterCon in Telford, was the comparative lack of casting into the future of what science fiction might pull on, do next, how might it help society develop in a positive way and what can be done to encourage its development.

A good example is we have a whole load of science being discovered and technologies being developed without people really knowing what they are and how they be impacted by them in the future. The research going in the universities and laboratories around the world is not filtering through to the people in the street. I remember a time when there were magazines and Tomorrow’s World on BBC to do just that. It meant such information was accessible for very little if any outlay. Now research is barricaded in by non-disclosure agreements or contracts. Admittedly, I can understand a firm investing in research wanting to keep it for themselves. No issues there. But what about having a description of the research aims made easily accessible to the public without the need to go into the crux of how it works etc?

The trouble is the development of science and technology has become a veritable battlefield of secrecy and confidentiality. It is all to do with maximising profits and societal politics, and very little to do with improving the welfare of people in general. Yes there have been exceptions, like the inventor of the three-point seatbelt giving away the intellectual property rights for free. But these are few and far between.

Science fiction has and can throw a spanner in the works of the big science and technology development players. You only need to look at the extraordinary events surrounding the publication of Cleve Cartmill’s story, Deadline in 1944 to see how big such spanners can be. Is it any wonder that some of these big stakeholders in science and technology development might want to suppress sone science fiction stories because they describe far too accurately the research they are doing?

Of course one of the cheapest ways to suppress science fiction is to give the book a bad review as soon as possible after the publication. Hm… at this rate I’m going to come up with a short story about how there is a government or big corporation department whose job it is to steer science fiction away from accurately predicting the technology developments. It could turn into a very humorous egg-on-face story. Hm…

In the meantime please enjoy All Tomorrows Futures: Fictions That Disrupt while you have a chance…

A World of Science Fictional Connections

Yippee! Have a new short science fiction story published today on 365tomorrows – Web World – you can read it here. Enjoy!

I had safely returned from EasterCon 2024 at Telford yesterday. A weird thing happened on the way back… I got onto the train at Telford, suitcases and all. Another gentleman got on and sat on the seats immediately in front of me. He had long hair tied back in a pony tail – one half left a natural grey and the other half what I would call purple (though hairdressers and similar specialists might call it something else). Over the tannoy came the announcement from the conductor that the trains to Euston Station in London were still suffering problems at Milton Keynes – they had solved the main problem, but had discovered two further minor problems that needed dealing with. The people in the carriage burst out laughing. Said gentleman got up to get off at Wolverhampton as advised to catch the London train from there. We all gave him our sympathy. Then he said he had only been in Telford over the weekend. Of course I had to ask whether he had been to the science fiction convention. He had! He went onto say he wasn’t too worried about what time he got into London as his flight home to San Francisco was not until today! End result was we agreed we would meet up at WorldCon in Glasgow later this year, much to the amusement of other passengers. Yes, this can only happen to people in the science fiction community because we’re so… well, we’re so us!

Talking of EasterCon – I will be writing a report of the event, but subject to editorial approval, it will appear over on SFCrowsnest in due course. I was on three panels and I hope those of you who were there or who viewed them on catch-up (access only given to those who are members of EasterCon) enjoyed what I had to say.

My thanks go to several people. Roy Gray for selling copies of my debut novel, Edge of Existence, from his Interzone / Black Static table. Ben Greenaway, Stephan Oram and Eva Pascoe, for selling copies of my novella The Martian Wind, from the Cybersalon Press table, and to giving me such a wonderful time at the book launch of their All Tomorrows Futures, Fictions That Disrupt on Saturday evening.

As for sales of All Tomorrows Futures, Fictions That Disrupt – they seem to be going great guns. (UK Amazon link here.) It is in its own way yesteryear’s Analog magazine of today – a serious ground-breaking upgrade if you will.

EasterCon 2024 – Things I’ll be Doing!

Wow, EasterCon is only a few days and now have some idea of what I’ll be doing… This is my second EasterCon ever! Given my first one was a blur of tiredness because I was recovering from shingles, it can only get better, can’t it?

I’ll be on three panels…

Friday 16:00hrs – SF/F and the Industrial Revolution – As Moderator – Here we are at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, the very chasm of Mordor (otherwise known as Iron Bridge Gorge). Superficially science fiction celebrated the industrial revolution while fantasy recoiled from it, but is it that simple? Well of course not!

Sunday 16:00hrs – Tomorrow’s World – Sometimes SF authors get it right, and sometimes they point the way. But what promised tech miracles have failed to materialise? Will we ever have flying cars? Will an android ever serve you a drink? What are the imminent innovations and technologies that no one is writing about, yet?

Sunday 19:00 hrs – Sentient AI as Character – From Iain M Banks’ Minds to Becky Chambers Lovelace and Gareth L Powell’s Trouble Dog, SF stories have often contained sentient AI as characters. How do they differ from human characters? And can writers do things with sentient AI characters which they can’t do writing about humans?

The highlight for me of the actual conventions will be the anthology launch of All Tomorrows Futures: Fictions That Disrupt, published my Cybersalon Press at 17:30hrs on Saturday. My thanks go to Stephen Oran, Benjamin Greenaway and all the team at Cybersalon Press – it’s a marvellous anthology to have! Amazon Link Here.

On the Thursday evening prior to this, BSFA have kindly organised a reading even in the Heslop and Pritchard room at the Holiday Inn. Yes, I’ll be reading from C.A.T.’s novel – Edge of Existence! (Wow, that rascal gets me doing all sorts of crazy things, but then I think C.A.T. is one crazy robo-cat, fun, but crazy!) Amazon Link Here. I’ll be bringing a few author copies with me, which Roy Gray has kindly agreed to sell on his dealer’s table (Interzone) at EasterCon. (Psst, don’t C.A.T. or I’ll never here the end of his been to EasterCon!)

News and Happy Birthday to C.A.T.

I realised with shock that it has been thirteen years since the first C.A.T. story was published by TWB Press. Yes 11th March 2011 was the date that the kindle copy of C.A.T could found on Amazon. (UK Link here if you want to belatedly catch up on his beginnings!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, C.A.T. and thanks for the crazy ride.

Of course now that he’s had a whole novel published about him, he thinks he is royalty! So he’s decided his royal birthday is to be 23rd July – the date his novel was published on last year. (UK Amazon Link here.)

There will be a few paperback copies of the novel for sale at EasterCon – someone kindly offered some of his dealer’s table space for his majesty’s novel.

He is even more smug about the fact that I will give a reading from his novel at the BSFA open mike session on Thursday evening before EasterCon officially starts. Venue and time to be confirmed, but it will be in or near the Telford’s Internal Centre – the EasterCon venue.

Talking of EasterCon – I’ve had my draft panel timetable. I’m waiting until the programme is published and therefore confirmed before I say anything more… but I will be on panels!

There will also be a book launch – Cybersalon’s anthology, All Tomorrow’s Futures: Futures That Disrupt will have its EasterCon book launch at 17:30 on Saturday. (UK Amazon Pre-Order Link here.)

I’ll give you the final details of all the above when confirmed beyond a doubt!

And if this excitement wasn’t enough… there will be a little bit more before the end of the month… stay tuned..

Science Fiction, the Enabler of Humanity

Science fiction is an art and therefore will always be susceptible to personal interpretation. Which is why when it comes to organisations choosing the best of year SF novel, short story, artwork etc, there will always be some dissatisfaction at the results.

Most people can accept prizes being given out to close contenders. It is a matter nuance and balance. Equally, most people who have eclectic tastes can accept that what they find good is likely to beaten by works that they have very little idea about. It’s called being human. It’s life and the universe.

What I can’t accept is what seems to have happened with the Hugos in Chengdu. It looks like there has been a bias against people who have emigrated or permanently left China, or have voiced dissatisfaction with China. The summary details can be found here. When something obvious, blatant and shows a consistent pattern like this happens, it means power has been corrupted. A sad corollary is that those who won the Hugos in which people were deliberately excluded can never be sure they won their awards fairly and squarely by the rules.

It also means, science fiction is considered a force to be reckoned with by the powerful.

This does not come as a surprise to me. Science fiction helps progress real science by providing the scientists with ideas about what is around them and how they can use such phenomena to help make human life easier. And science progress helps with the democratisation process of putting the political power in the hands of the many and reducing the power of those who refuse to believe and act on their fellow humans having equal rights of choice and freedom.

In short, science fiction is an enabler to stop dictators of countries and whatever else existing and exercising their power. It always has been and always will be.

Which makes me wonder why there isn’t more interest in science fiction. Or putting it another way why is there so much more interest in fantasy? Fantasy is a genre that encourages head-burying away from reality. Science fiction faces up to it, makes valid points about the potential futures and is effectively a tool that helps the human race to not make mistakes. I still remember Matt Hancock, the UK Health Secretary, saying he watched a science fiction film about how to handle a pandemic at the start of Covid taking hold in the UK and used it as a basis for some of his crucial decisions that he got right! This comment alone speaks to the real power of science fiction.

So why are we still seeing far more fantasy than science fiction in the bookstores, cinemas and television than is healthy for us?

One possible contributory reason is that fantasy is easier to produce. I’ve occasionally dabbled in fantasy, and yes it takes me a far shorter time to produce a decent short fantasy story than a decent science fiction one.

Another reason could be what is effectively the same reason as most people maths… laziness of sorts. I have always said with maths, it is like a brick wall: you need the lower bricks in place before you place the higher ones where they should be. What happens is many people are taught the maths of higher bricks without having the understanding of the lower supporting bricks. No wonder they end up frustrated with the subject. In the case of science fiction, there are a lot of ideas that consumers readily accept without the necessary explanation, such as the grandfather paradox in time travel or needing to use hyperdrives to travel between distant planets. People coming new to such assumptions rightly feel as if they don’t make sense and like the maths feel frustrated by it.

I can’t help feeling that there are more reasons at the lack of science fiction interest at play than these. And I come keep coming back to the question, is there some sort power base that is preventing science fiction being published or shown?

Treacle Tart Science-fiction-ness

Having a mini-declutter leads to finding things I had long forgotten about, as well as sending more stuff to be recycled, up-cycled, any-cycled! Of course, I keep things that I’ve got fond memories of, such as the final statement of my sale of a whiskey barrel.

It was another piece of paper that brought back fond memories on Cornwall – a region in the southwest of England for those who don’t know it. One of the treats I used to have when on holiday there was a treacle tart, where the treacle was said to come from treacle mines.

No, I’m not joking. Talk to any true Cornishman and they’ll tell you all about the treacle mines. The legend may have something to do with the mines on the eastern edge of Dartmoor which is in the neighbouring country to Cornwall. They produced micaceous hematite, which was used as pounce to dust early ink to prevent smearing. The mines were locally known as treacle mines since they show a glistening black residue that looks like treacle.

The piece of paper I found dates back to 1992 and referenced what was in reality a disused oil rig that had been parked up in the Fal estuary off Trefusis Point. The article said the drilling rig was there to sink a new borehole and pump the treacle via an old tunnel. It also said that hundreds of new jobs would be created with the reopening of the Wheal Clinton Treacle Mine!

Of course this had both the locals and holidaymakers in stitches. They eagerly awaited further news of the treacle mine re-opening.

Sadly after a few years, things went very quiet and remain quiet to this day. Although treacle mines are still referred to if you have a treacle tart in a pub or restaurant!

What has all this got to do with science fiction? The treacle mines are a legend that grew out observation and comparison that people found intriguing. There is mention of a treacle well in Alice in Wonderland (published 1865, well before the use of golden syrup in modern day treacle tarts). Treacle mining also features in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Interestingly treacle mines exist in Discworld because people believe in them. There have been children’s stories that have treacle mines included. But a treacle mine in a science fiction story used in a science fictional sense? Not that I can think of.

But – and here comes an interesting point – in 1996 the Starchaser 2 rocket was launched from Northumberland, powered by sugar. It reached 1,890 feet (576 metres). Now what if we had a rocket fuelled by high-grade mined treacle… …you can see where this be heading… said she her fingers itching over an empty word document…

2024 – What is in store for Science Fiction?

It’s that time to ask what the near future is for science fiction. You could say writing the answer is science fiction about science fiction.

There are already many givens – new books that have publication dates announced for this year, new programmes that have their first airing dates announced for this year and conventions that have their dates and places set on Earth. These have been written or spoken about elsewhere in the media, so I’ll skip what would have otherwise been a repetitive info-dump.

With Worldcon coming to Glasgow in the UK, it is my intention to attend. I have bought ticket, reserved flights and booked a hotel. In fact, the organisers have sent out a questionnaire because I said I’d be interested in being on a panel. Whether they will find a slot for me is entirely up to them – a case of wait and see… but I have lots to say about science fiction ideas that can be actually achieved in reality, which is very exciting.

I spent part of last year writing a short story on contract for an anthology. It hasn’t, as far as I’m aware been publicly announced yet. All I can say is that as of this moment this exciting anthology is on course to be published in time for EasterCon.

Then there is the publication of my second novel, A Truth Beyond Full, to look forward to. Work is going on behind the scenes.

Well that’s my news. What about the science fiction trends for this year?

I asked one friend who has a far greater overview of the genre than I have as far as books are concerned. His reaction is more of the same type of thing we’ve had over the last few years. This means publishers pushing out works similar to those that have made profits in the past, which in turn the continuing of the bias towards fantasy.

For the first time in I don’t know how many years, I’m not sure I agree with him. The space race, this time to set up a moon-base is starting to visibly hot up. The climate change consequences are more tangible to every single Earther, and more people are seeking answers. Medical breakthroughs are coming thick and fast, with some surprises in the mix e.g. the recent announcement of a new antibiotic coming onto the market. The recent slew of better-detailed astronomical pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) look more like art than science, and are absolutely beautiful. As for physics, well the research and development are showing some unexpected results that have a natural wow-factor if you know what to look for. This and much more will lead writers to explore how extrapolations of these initiatives will impact how we live and suggest solutions to real problems. It will only take one grabbing your attention novel making very interesting relevant points. The readership are tired of the same old fantasy ideas even if they are beautifully revamped. They are ready for the real new.

Exciting times ahead. Happy New Year!