I’ve been gone for a while because of various commitments. When I hit tax time I get very, very stressed and tend to drop everything else. Now that I’m pretty much done things are beginning to settle out a bit, which is good. I’m reading for both The New Space Opera (we’re waiting for two or three stories to come in) and for The Jack Vance Treasury (we want a final list in a week or so), waiting to hear back if my YA SF anthology was accepted, doing paperwork, committing acts of poor taste, not watching the World Cup, nagging my travel agent to actually finish up the bookings for the US trip, and actually, by recent standards, winding down. The next few weeks will mostly be filled by doing this stuff, and by getting some proposals out to publishers. If I remember correctly, it won’t be so long till I’ve delivered everything under contract, and I’ve got some new projects I’m excited to get on with after World Fantasy this November.

In the meantime, some quick comments and recommendations:

I just read Charlie Stross’s new novelette “Trunk and Disorderly”, which he mentions here, and which will be published in Asimov’s soon-ish. It’s a funny mid-future SF romp in a very Wodehousian mode. I think a good dollop of the kind of exoticism that you see in Jack Vance could have worked well too, but I think it works very well as it is, and is a good story. It’s also the first in a series of stories, so I’ll be fascinated to see what happens next.

Chris Rowe’s “The Voluntary State” was one of the most interesting SF stories of the year before last. He’s about to show up in the pages of F&SF with a really great story, “Another Word for Map is Faith“. If memory serves it’s part of his “Uncommonwealth” series of stories, and it’s terrific. A doozy. I’ll be stunned if it doesn’t show up in a bunch of year’s bests.

The ever wonderful Sharyn November sent me a care package which arrived two days ago, stuffed with goodies. I’m currently two-thirds of the way through Delia Sherman’s upcoming novel Changeling, and loving it. It’s set in the same world and features some of the characters from her story “CATNYP”,. which I also loved. Check it out.