write the coolest books. I can’t wait to read this one or this one. And then, of course, there’s Leviathan.

Didn’t sleep well, but got up and started the day with good news. First, news that you can read Greg and Ken’s New Space Opera stories over at the Eos website got boingboinged (thanks Cory!). Second, Diana Gill at Harper let me know that plans are well advanced for a mass market paperback edition of the book this September. Both of those are plenty to make me smile.

Having just come off a weekend where The New Space Opera picked up two Australian awards and when it sits directly linked to four Hugo nominations, I’m feeling very good about the book. Right now, Gardner and I are reading for the second volume.  It’s early days yet, but we have a couple stories in and a lot more scheduled. I think it’ll be a lighter, more adventure-oriented volume, but hopefully will have a similar impact.  I also would love to end up doing one of these every two years.  I think it would be awesomely cool.
I’m also working on an answer to an SF Mind Meld question about space opera.  Working on NSO, The Starry Rift, and Godlike Machines has really brought home to me how much I love, and how other people respond to, centre-of-the-field science fiction, how much we love stories with rocketships, rayguns, robots and stuff.

The good people at HarperEos have posted the full texts of the two Hugo Award nominated stories from The New Space Opera – Greg Egan’s novelette “Glory” and Ken Macleod’s “Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?”. You can read them both here. Eos are also running a giveaway where you can win copies of The New Space Opera and Michael Chabon’s Hugo nominated The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which I totally loved.

Time does strange things. I have absolutely no recollection of writing this seventeen years ago. I was googling some information for a note about the Swancon just gone this weekend, and wanted some dates for Swancon 11 when I found my con report for Swancon 15. What struck me most about it? Not the melifluous prose. Mostly that I was a sarcky fucker, in truth. Sarcasm and cynicism are lazy and poor responses to life, really. I’ve not attended every Swancon in the history of the world. I started up in 1986, and what I remember of the event exists in somewhat fond haze really. Since then I’ve missed one completely when I was living in Oakland in 1997, have shown up at a handful, and have attended all of close to something like 22 of them, most recently over the weekend past.

What would I say to the 26-year-old me writing in May 1990 for the first issue of Eidolon? Apart from eat right and take care of your knees, open your eyes and look around you. I’d been in fandom for about five years. It had already given me some of the best friends I would ever find – hi Robin, Keira, Richard, Jeremy, Terry, Cindy and everyone else – friends who I’m still in touch with 18 years later. It introduced me to people I could never have imagined meeting, many of whom I befriended. It led directly to my traveling to the US, meeting Marianne, and having a family. Although I’d written a few book reviews (for a fanzine, I note), I had no notion of editing anything before Swancon 15. I walked out of it with the notion of publishing a fanzine with some friends. That led to Eidolon, to the Australian years best anthologies with Jeremy, to working for Locus, to editing year’s bests with Karen, and then on to the books of the past few years, culminating in my Hugo nomination last week.  I think I said it poorly when I was lucky enough to share a Ditmar Award with my dear friends Russell and Gardner, but what I do now literally could not have happened without Swancon.  I definitely have had some input too, but I would never have started without it.  There have been bumps on the road, and I’m not Swancon’s most favourite son, but it’s been an important event in my life.  Having kids makes it hard to attend Swancon the way I used to, but I’ll always make time for it as best I can.

Jeff Ford is one of the nicest people I’ve met since I started working in science fiction and fantasy.  He’s an incredible writer, and it’s worth traveling to wherever World Fantasy might be each year just to get to hang out in the bar for a while. I’ve been incredibly lucky over the past few years, and he’s written wonderful stories for me for Eclipse One and The Starry Rift (he’s also writing a space opera for me for Eclipse Two that I can’t wait to see).  I was thrilled when he decided to make “The Drowned Life”, his story for Eclipse One, the title story for his new collection. Even now, the thought makes me smile.  Anyhow, Jeff has just posted in his blog that there’s a reading online of the story and an interview about it, both courtesy of Rick Kleffel’s The Agony Column.  Check ’em out, and if you’ve not, think about checking out Jeff’s collection.