Notes From Coode Street

We were being silly today, at lunchtime. A crazy family! Sophie says “I love you very much, mommy”. Jessie says “I love you daddy, squat squat.” I don’t know what to say.

I don’t talk about sport much here because, mostly, it doesn’t fit. Still. As many of you know, Australia is currently leading ‘the stinking surrender monkeys’ four nil in the latest Ashes series. This is a simply a restoration of the normal order of things. Now, some people are starting to talk about how things will change when Australia next plays in an Ashes series. This will be in England in 2009. By that time a number of very important Australian players will have retired from the game, and new players will have been blooded to fill out the team.  The talk is that this will make Australia more beatable, give England a realistic chance of winner. I don’t think so, and here’s why. Despite losing champions from this champion team, what Australia does have is a champion system. It produces excellent players. We also have a deeply established culture of competitiveness, of professionalism, of pushing to win that has been embedded over the captaincies of Border, Taylor, Waugh and now Ponting. This just won’t ‘go away’. No matter how the personnel change in either the Australian or the England teams (and some of these stinking surrender monkeys will go too, don’t doubt that), Australia will take the field in 2009 believing it WILL win. That will be the difference.

The nice folk over at the UK SF Book News Network have done a short interview with me about The Jack Vance Treasury. It’s due out in January, which means we should be seeing final copies very soon. I’ve also pretty much done the last things (except a final proofread) for Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling. I’ve seen a cover rough for the book, and expect galleys in a few months. The book is due out in August 2007, which is cool. I’ll have a few things out ’round then.

Pfeh on this year. Pfeh pfeh on having a virus at Christmas. I hope you and all of yours are having, will have, are about to have, or had a wonderful, wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Year.

The word from far north Queensland is that the nominees for most of the Aurealis Awards have been announced. To my great delight, six of the stories from Eidolon have been shortlisted for the Awards. Congratulations to all of the nominees, and especially to Eidolon’s authors. A special extra shout out to Shaun Tan, who managed to get nominated for best short story with a work that features no words!