Well, this is just a minor bit of updatery. Things are busy at Merton Way, and only going to get busier in coming weeks. This week is all about prep for Miss Eight’s coming natal transition into her forthcoming persona as Miss Nine, which includes present gathering and the imminent arrival of the very first ever sleepover party this coming Saturday.

At the same time I am busy Really Trying Quite Hard to read a lot. I’ve been making my way through piles of anthologies, collections, and such, discovering some wonderful stories while still looking rather desperately for ‘Awesome Science Fiction’ which seems a little thin on the ground this year.

I am also developing a new Sekrit Projekt, which is actually proceeding quite well, while working on Eclipse Four, Under My Hat, Cyberpunk, two single author collections, and the best of the year. Busy times, and only likely going to  get busier given that I’m heading to the US in a touch over two weeks for World Fantasy.  

I fly out on Saturday 23 October and spend some time catching up with dear friends in Sydney, then a couple days in the Bay Area where I’ll stay with Ellen K and the Locus crew (a night at the house will be interesting) and grab dinner with Bob & Karen, then on to Columbus for the convention, before spending a night with Gary in Chicago. Should be quite the trip, delivering me home on November 4 with a month to finish the year’s best and other stuff  before Christmas!

And amongst all of that I’m reading Howl’s Moving Castle for the first time when I really should just be reading short stories…

I occasionally post to the Asimov’s Forums, an interesting message board owned and run by the good folk who publish Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. I confess, though, that I don’t check in there often, and I also am lousy at keeping track of usernames and passwords for things like message boards.

Given that, I thought I’d grab a question raised by the estimable Fabrice D. about Eclipse Four.  Many moons ago, on their Original Anthologies – 2010 thread, he asked:

What will be the flavour of Eclipse 4? [The first three being three very different books, my favourites in the “3” being, on the SF side: “It takes Two” (that will probably end on my Hugo nomination ballot ), “Useless Things” and “Galapagos”. On the fantasy side: “Sleight of hand”, “The Pretender’s Tourney” and of course (being a Frenchman and an admirer of Rousseau’s paintings), “The Visited Man”].

A good question, indeed. When Jason Williams and I first conceived of the Eclipse series the idea was to produce a very broad series of books that simply gathered together ‘good stuff’.

The first volume was very much that sort of thing, I think, but it lacked a consistent feel or focus.  The second volume was pushed very much towards SF, as I’ve discussed here before. The third volume was different again. Responding to the criticism the series had received, I cast my net wider and ultimately I think produced a better book. It’s less centre-of-genre in many ways, but has a consistent feel to it and an overall high quality of stories that helped make it the most successful volume, critically and commercially, so far.

Given that it’s also the one I’m happiest with overall, my intention is to very much continue the series as a follow-on from Eclipse Three.  The volume I’m working on now, Eclipse Four, is intended to be a direct follow-on from that book. It will feature some of the same writers, and hopefully will feel similar to Three.  I’ve already bought stories for it from Andy Duncan, Emma Bull, Gwyneth Jones, Peter M. Ball, and others, and am waiting on a stack of submissions so I can wind it up by Christmas, and get it ready for May 2011.  When it’s done I’ll definitely get a ToC up here.  Hope that answers the question.

I’m trying out various names for my attempt to get caught up on reading for the year’s best. As has been rightly pointed out, so many of the dramatic names that get used online are really inappropriate when it comes down to it.  It’s not on, for example, to call it a death march or even a putsch, when you’re sitting in a nice comfy armchair with gentle music playing in the background while you read.  But it’s nice to have a rubric, a banner to rally to and to use to motivate yourself.

With that in mind, I have decided I am now engaged in the “Really Trying Quite Hard” Reading Catch Up.  It encompasses the essence of the effort without going overboard.  Now, back to reading.

I’ve spent a reasonable part of 2010 working on anthologies that will see print during 2011. The first of these, and one of my favorites, is Engineering Infinity, a hard SF anthology that I’ve edited for Jonathan Oliver at Solaris Books.

I’ll be honest and say that one or two of the stories in the book stretched my definitions of hard SF somewhat (though it’s all ‘pure quill SF’ Gardner). I’m very happy with the end result. It’s my first book to be published in the UK and will be out in January (close to simulataneously in the US, UK and Australia), just in time for my 47th birthday.  Here’s the ToC:

1. Introduction
2. Malak, Peter Watts
3. Watching the Music Dance, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
4. Laika’s Ghost, Karl Schroeder
5. The Invasion of Venus, Stephen Baxter
6. The Server and the Dragon, Hannu Rajaniemi
7. Bit Rot, Charles Stross
8. Creatures with Wings, Kathleen Ann Goonan
9. Walls of Flesh, Bars of Bone, Damien Broderick & Barbara Lamar
10. Mantis, Robert Reed
11. Judgement Eve, John C. Wright
12. A Soldier of the City, David Moles
13. Mercies, Gregory Benford
14. The Ki-anna, Gwyneth Jones
15. The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees, John Barnes

I am now thoroughly invested in the whole Read a Whole Buttload of Stories by WFC thing. I spent yesterday afternoon reading, did a bit last night, and then was catching up on F&SF reading this morning when I realised that I’m done with zombies for the moment.  I was reading a perfectly good story by Steven Popkes called “The Crocodiles”, which is all about the Nazis developing zombies as a weapon for WW2, when I realised I didn’t need any more undead for a bit.  I’m half way through Unicorns vs. Zombies, really enjoyed The Loving Dead and stories in Subterranean, F&SF and elsewhere, but I’m sort of done with the whole idea right now.  I find myself craving hard SF.