Big Dumb Object

Somehow all the publishing news always seems to be bad, fewer books being bought, shorter author lists at publishers, less shelf-space for SFF. And yet, Orbit seem to be doing okay, so much so that they've just announced expansion plans...

In the US, Orbit is going to double the size of the list over the next 3 years, taking its title output to 70-80 titles per year by 2011. In the UK, where Orbit is already the biggest SFF imprint, it will increase the size of the list by approximately 10% each year over the next three years.

Via www.orbitbooks.net

Via a post by Paul Cornell's, which highlights a load of stuff he's doing he mentions...

Iain Banks has now taken a look at the recording script of my BBC Radio 4 adaptation of his novella ‘The State of the Art’ and pronounces himself pleased. Any awfulness, of course, remains my own, and is not his responsibility. We’re now into the exciting process of casting, news of which I shall share with you when I can, and will be recording in a few weeks, for broadcast early next year.

Cool. I'm pretty excited about that. I wonder whether to read it again first, it's been a while, or maybe having forgot the details might be a nice way to hear the radio version?

Also in that post, Paul mentions an interview with Grant Morrison (who I still think of as "that guy from 2000AD who wrote Zenith" because I'm so out of touch with comics), where he talks about Doctor Who; interesting summation of the first three series.

Niall has a detailed summary of the Science Fiction as a Literary Genre Symposium which was held in London yesterday.

Or, if you want a brief summary, Paul has a Tweet about it.

There should be video up on the website, sooner or later.

I'm experiencing some slow performance with this site. It's noticeable when anything calls a cgi script ie. comments, searching tags etc. I'm looking into it.

And before anyone recommends some other blog engine or technology, try running PHP without mod_php and you'll see what the problem is. And yes I should use FastCGI etc. etc.

Geoff Ryman was interviewed (briefly) on Radio 4, for Front Row, about the Mundane Science Fiction movement. That interview has now been converted to MP3 for all to hear. Nice plug for Interzone!

Via Mundane-SF

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF) is offering review free copies of July 2008 to bloggers willing to blog about it. There's a limited amount, so you better be quick.

Darren has finally called time on UKSFBN. He says it's hibernation, but it may be a long winter (he's now working for Orbit).

UKSFBN evolved out of the trail-blazing The Alien Online website (what no Wikipedia page?!), whose list of past reviewers is really quite cool.

Jay Lake, get well soon! His Livejournal has dispensed more useful nuggets of writing advice to me than any other source. Thank you, and take it easy.

Things start going wrong in the future.  "Something Nice Back Home" takes us from happy (but reluctant) Jack, Kate and Aaron, to a disintegrating relationship. Jack is slowly going crazy, but it's not entirely obvious why: is it because he is an alcoholic and addicted to prescription drugs? Is it because he is seeing is father? Is it because Hurley is creeping him out? Is it because he doesn't want to be with Kate and Aaron? Or is it The Island calling him back?

There are more hints in this episode that there is some sort of destiny, with Hurley saying that Jack was not meant to raise Aaron. Which kind of implies that everything is planned out, and they are breaking the greater plan somehow. Hurley of course thinks that they are dead. Personally I think it's more likely that they changing a pre-ordained time-space path and the dead people are in fact leaking across from parallel universes.

The plot on The Island meanwhile stayed in a holding pattern this week. Well, Jack had life-saving surgery, Sawyer found dead bodies buried in the jungle and Claire walked off with her dead father,  but that's just everyday life on The Island.

I have a feeling that non-SF fans are going to be annoyed with any forthcoming answers, because they inevitably are going to involve something SFish. Surely that's been obvious from the start? And yet everyone still watches it, many wanting some rational, present-day, non-SF explanation for everything. Ho ho.

Ansible 250, May 2008