Some while ago Tor US sent me an ARC of Peter Watts’ excellent book Blindsight, which I read almost in a state of shock because it was so good, and for which I wrote the blurb:

“Blindsight is excellent. It’s state-of-the-art science fiction: smart, dark and it grabs you by the throat from page one. Like a C J Cherryh book it makes you feel the danger of the hostile environment (or lack of one) out there. And it plays with some fascinating possibilities in human development, and some disconcerting ideas about human consciousness. What else can I say? Thanks for giving me the privilege of reading this.”

A short while after this I was checking a few things out on the net when I discovered Peter has an excellent website here http://www.rifters.com/index.htm — particularly worth checking out is his lecture on Vampire Domestication http://www.rifters.com/real/progress.htm To my delight I discovered that he already had four other SF books published, so I got chatting with him and arranged a books exchange. Subsequently I received signed copies of Starfish, Maelstrom, Behemoth B-Max and Behemoth Seppuku (The last two here are actually one book divided into two for the benefit of American book sellers – perhaps their staff have been suing for RSI damages caused by lifting any book of more than 110,000 words).

I’ve read all four books now and though I don’t think the last three are as good as Blindsight (which I have to say is the best SF book I have read in years), I definitely put them in a league ahead of most stuff out there. Really, if I hadn’t read Blindsight, Starfish would have been at the top of my best SF book list for the last few years, with the others a short distance behind it.

Why these books are not much more well-known and why they are not published in Britain is a complete mystery to me. Maybe, as some reviewers have opined, they’re too dark and cynical. Maybe they’re too intelligent. Whatever. I think they are far more deserving of plaudits than so many we’ve seen on the shortlists of various awards over very many years.

But the Japanese have got some catching up to do with the Germans. Bastei Lubbe have bought everything up to Hilldiggers, in fact they took Polity Agent before anyone had seen it and Hilldiggers before I’d even written it. I’m really grateful for their confidence in me, if somewhat spooked too.

My thanks of course to Stefan Bauer. It must be a bugger of a market there when it seems that every German I’ve encountered tells me they read the English version!

Here then is the cover of The Voyage of the Sable Keech. Please, no comments about loud and smelly flatulence, and no giggling. We are serious literary people here…

Liz Johnson (Rights & Co-editions Manager at Macmillan) “…is truly delighted to report a Japanese deal for COWL. This is particularly exciting news as the Japanese fiction (and particularly Sci-fi) market is incredibly difficult at the moment – so many congratulations! Hayakawa Publishing Inc. will publish in paperback within 24 months.”

Excellent stuff – that’s country number nine after the USA, Russia, Germany, France, Portugal, Czechoslovakia, Spain and Romania.

Now, my thanks to Hayato Kato who approached me to get one of my short stories (The Veteran) published in Hayakawa’s magazine. He took it upon himself to push me out there and doubtless this result is much due to him!

Sigh, I sometimes wonder whether sending people signed copies of my books is worth the hassle. Some of you reading this may recollect my rant about the Canadian post office, with its stringent bureaucratic bullshit about how parcels should be addressed. They lost one parcel and returned another parcel to me (I did not put a senders address on the front, so some twat looked inside the parcel to find said address so as to return the parcel). But this was not the end of the matter. Sticking utterly to the letter of Canadian post office law I sent books in two parcels, because in one parcel they were nearing the weight limit and I didn’t want mistakes. These parcels were also correctly addressed and signed-for delivery.

Well, for various reasons I’ve not been reading as much as usual, and my ‘to read’ pile has been stacking up. First on my list upon returning to it was Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell. It’s always a little worrying reading a book by an author you’ve had contact with since you always feel the urge to say something nice even if you don’t mean it. I’ve tried to hammer down on that over the last few years. Now I will only comment on a book if it is one that grabs me and keeps me focused on it throughout; one I’ll read in preference to doing just about anything else. I’m happy to say that Crystal Rain is such a book. It’s got all the stuff I like: a bastard superhuman immortal, cruel rip-your-guts-out aliens, action, characters I cared about and a good story. If you like my stuff, I rather think you’ll like this too.

Here’s a first look at the probable cover of Hilldiggers. I like this. Someone has definitely read the book to produce it because this is the ‘massively secure space station’ mentioned in the blurb below. A station called Corisanthe Main.

During a war between two planets in the same solar system – each occupied by adapted humans – what is thought to be a cosmic superstring is discovered. After being cut, this object collapsed into four cylindrical pieces, each about the size of a tube train. Each is densely packed with either alien technology or some kind of life. They are placed in three Ozark cylinders of a massively secure space station. A female scientist, conducting research there, falls pregnant, gives birth to quads, then commits suicide.

By the end of the war one planet has been devastated by the hilldiggers – giant space dreadnoughts employing weapons capable of creating mountain ranges. The quads have grown up and are assuming positions of power in the post war society. One of them will eventually control the hilldiggers.

Many thanks to Kevin and the rest at Forbidden Planet for having me there signing books, and for helping clean up my bag, camera case and so forth. I turned up there slightly hung-over and in need of a coke, and before entering the store, took a few gulps from a bottle before returning it to my bag. The cap wasn’t on properly. Result: bag full of coke, three discount copies of Prador Moon sold in the pub afterwards, numerous soaked bookmarks and one defunct digital camera. Suffice to say it wasn’t particularly profitable trip for me.

Nice to meet (in the bookshop and in The Angel) Peter Haydies and Saba, Mark Croucher, Neil Mullins, Scott Hume and Jools Enticknap – who gave up on getting me to sign his second name when he saw I couldn’t even get the first one right! Thanks for an excellent evening, and I hope you enjoyed yourselves. You’ve learnt now that the SF writer is just as capable of talking complete bollocks after a few pints as any other mortal. In fact, I think that’s par for the course.