A few years ago Tor Books published Ted Chiang’s extraordinary first collection, Stories of Your Life and Others. Even though Chiang is a wonderful writer and Tor is a very fine publisher, it proved not to be a marriage made in heaven. Ted blogs about the details here.

Shaun Tan’s latest project, Aqua Sapiens – Mission Inconspicuous, is a collaboration with the Spare Parts Puppet Theatre. It’s intensely cool. Shaun has designed and painted four very large puppets – they’re about 9 feet tall – and they take part in free public performances with a couple human actors. Marianne and I went to see it with Sophie, who was scared, but fascinated. I think she thought the best part was when the show was over and she could talk to one of the puppeteers and even go inside the biggest of the puppets. Very cool. It would make a great picture book (to give you an idea of scale, the puppet that was developed from the sketch shown here was about six feet high and seemed like a small vehicle). Oh, and there are six more performances you can catch if you’re in Perth.

I received the June issue of F&SF (which, by the way, is having a wonderful year) in my inbox last night. All of a sudden it felt like the year, which previously had been jogging away from me, was now at a dead run. Arg.

Via Charlie’s Live Journal, a map of the States I’ve visited in the US. I think I’ve spent nearly two years in the US now, in bits and pieces…and I’ll be coloring in a middle bit when I go to World Fantasy later this year. Also, I did change plans in Chicago, but that seems like it shouldn’t count.

Following on from my comments below, I’m delighted to be able to announce that Gardner Dozois and I have sold an new original anthology, The New Space Opera, to HarperCollins US and HarperCollins Australia. The book is supposed to be BIG and we’ve got all sorts of way cool writers, from M. John Harrison to Dan Simmons, Greg Egan to Charlie Stross on board to write for it. I’m really excited about this book. I started playing with the idea for doing it back in the mid-90s and now it’s finally going to happen. I’m particularly happy about being able to do the book with Gardner. I’ve been a fan of his fiction since reading “Dinner Party” in Mike Bishop’s Light Years and Dark, and his editing since the first Year’s Best. It’s privilege to do a project with him.

Anyhow, enough of my gushing. If all goes to plan the book should be out in early 2007. We have all of the contributors lined up and it should be a joy to do. Can’t wait to see the first stories…