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.

A quick follow on about Shaun Tan, who has a website here. In October Hachette Livre Australia will published Shaun’s next book, The Arrival. It’s literally like nothing he’s done before. I’ve seen some pieces from it – and he’s said he’s going to bring the rest over to the house in the next few weeks – and it’s basically a 128 page graphic novel with no text. He’s been working on it for nearly four years, at one point throwing out a large chunk because the style didn’t quite fit, and redoing it. If it’s as good as I think it’s likely to be, it’s going to be astounding. I’ll post more on it when I have more from Shaun. In the meantime, I don’t think there’s an edition currently slated for outside Australia (though that’ll probably happen). Were I coming to World Fantasy I’d bring a box of copies and sell them myself. As I’m not, you might want to try pre-ordering it here or here.

At last! A calendar I’d really love to have! I don’t know whether it’s being released in Australia, but you can get an official 2007 Shaun Tan Calendar from amazon.co.uk, if nowhere else. I’ll be ordering one.

What exactly is The New Space Opera? Following a comment from RobB, I realised that I may not have updated you all on what this project is, and when it’s headed your way. The short version is that it is an original science fiction anthology co-edited with Gardner Dozois that will be published by HarperEos in the United States and HarperCollinsVoyager in Australia. We don’t have a definite publication date yet, but it should be Fall 2007 (so probably August or September of that year).  

Where are we at with it? Gardner and I have been reading submissions for the past few months, and are pushing towards having 200,000 words of really topnotch new science fiction stories for the book. So far we’ve got some terrific stuff by Dan Simmons, Peter F. Hamilton, Robert Silverberg, Stephen Baxter, Paul McAuley, Alstair Reynolds, Gwyneth Jones, Mary Rosenblum, Nancy Kress, Greg Egan, Tony Daniel, Robert Reed, Ken Macleod, and a handful of others. If all goes to plan, we’ll be handing the book in soon-ish, so I’ll have a final list of contributors soon-ish. And, if Gardner and I have our way, we hope to be able to work together on a New Space Opera 2 at some point.

Grant Stone and Wolfe Bylsma have started to podcast the ever terrific local SF radio program, The Faster Than Light Radio Show. As they say, it’s ‘a popular culture analysis & review talks-based radio show offering the latest news, reviews and interviews, drawing on 25+ years experience in broadcasting AND the Speculative Culture fan community.’ I’ve been listening to it for years, and I think it’ll make a great weekly podcast.  If it sounds like your thing, then check out the website, blog, and podcast. They even have a bookstore!